Nothing Sacred
by hollycomb
Summary: After years of quiet obsession, Kenny is in a financial position to steal Kyle away from Cartman, but his emotional maturity is another matter. Stan is staying with Kenny as a guest for the summer, and he has desires of his own to contend with. (Stan POV)
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Well, so. This happened, and I need to get it out of my system, and based on how quickly I wrote this chapter, I think the rest of the story will come quickly, too.

Inspired by _The Great Gatsby_, with some major departures.

I wanted to write about a glowing green orb, because there are never enough of them in fandom.

* * *

There was a time in my life when I believed I would never return to South Park. My father had moved away when I was a teen, and my mother saw no reason to remain there after I finished high school and went on to college. I'd had friends there, once, very close ones, but we all drifted apart during our early twenties, or so I believed. I was in school on the east coast, developing a little life of my own, struggling to make light of my origins in that small mountain town amongst people who I viewed as far more sophisticated than myself. I found that I'd assumed, incorrectly, that I'd put all of that well behind me, when I received an invitation that made me almost comatose with pointless grief for some days.

It was a wedding invitation: Eric Theodore Cartman was to marry Kyle Broflovski on the third of June. I made several attempts to contact Kyle via our old channels of communication - emails, cell phone, even Facebook - but all of those seemed to have gone into disuse, and I received no response to my inquiries about what he could possibly be thinking. I did not attend the wedding. I did not even return the RSVP card, and spent the third of June in a drunken stupor that ended in bad sex with a stranger.

A year later, I was finishing up an unpaid internship at an environmental consulting firm when I received another completely unexpected invitation that seemed to arrive directly out of the past. It was from my childhood friend Kenny McCormick, who I had not seen or spoken to since he left South Park at the age of seventeen. Apparently he had resettled near our hometown, at the edge of Turquoise Lake, where resort communities had been going up as I was on my way out of Colorado. He was offering me the guesthouse on his property as a summer residence, for the purpose of reconnecting, and because it was wasteful to leave it empty. I was shocked not only to hear from him after all those years but to learn that he owned the sort of property that featured a guesthouse: Kenny had been penniless when he dropped out of high school and left our hometown.

Having no summer job, no extension on my lease and a savings that was dwindling quickly down to nothing, I accepted his invitation at once. Since it had come to me by way of a letter, with no phone number or email address indicated, that was my method of responding. A week after I had sent my acceptance, a plane ticket in my name came by mail, along with a brief note about Kenny's driver picking me up at the Denver airport. I told all of my friends in Connecticut that I was about to embark on the kind of adventure that only narrators in melodramas were privileged enough to experience. I had no idea how right I was, and how unlucky, too, in the way that protagonists necessarily are.

I did have a few reservations as Kenny's driver bore me away from the city and into the mountains. The car was sleek and black, with leather seating and vents on the backs of the two front seats that could be adjusted for every passenger. I was sweating, and I turned my individual thermostat down to 65, wondering if it was rude not to make small talk with the driver. He was wearing a full uniform, complete with cap and gloves, and I was beginning to wonder if this whole enterprise was some sort of elaborate joke.

It would have been elaborate indeed: we arrived at a positively palatial estate around sundown, iron gates opening to reveal a sprawling mansion at the end of a winding driveway. It was a cinematic scene, the white house with its stone columns gleaming under the fading sunlight, beautifully landscaped grounds lit with an orange glow. I was tempted to ask the driver how on earth Kenny had come to afford this property at the age of twenty-four, but I thought that would make me seem classless, which was something I had become accustomed to guarding myself against.

Kenny was there to greet us in the theatric front foyer, which was all marble, flanked by a curved double staircase and crowned with an enormous crystal chandelier. It was ostentatious, a poor man's vision of success, but I was impressed all the same, and might not have made that judgment had I not known Kenny's origins. He was smiling at the sight of me, wearing a black turtleneck despite the heat, well-fitted slacks and argyle socks - no shoes. He came forward with a drink in his hand, and I thought it was on offer to me, but he withheld it and embraced me.

"Stan," he said when he pulled back, still smiling. "You came."

"I did. This is - what on earth is this, anyway?"

Kenny threw back his head and laughed. He smelled of the whiskey he was drinking, but didn't seem drunk, only cheerful.

"It's my house," he said. "What do you think?"

"I think it's - massive. I, uh. Congrats on your good fortune."

"Thanks. Come in! Put your bag down. They'll carry it up to your room."

By 'they' he meant the staff, who were present in almost every room we passed through as he gave me the general tour. Kenny was obviously proud of the decorating he'd done, particularly in original artwork, and I listened patiently while he curated his collection. I wanted to ask how he'd become wealthy, but held back. Eventually, over drinks on the patio that overlooked a large, well-lit swimming pool, we talked of the old days and people we'd known.

"Did you get an invitation last year?" I asked. "To Kyle's wedding?" It still made me ache to utter those words. Kenny smiled strangely and peered into his drink. He hadn't yet offered me any food, but we'd both downed three whiskey and sodas.

"Let me show you something," Kenny said, and he rose from his chair.

I followed him, confused, down a wide stone path that went around the side of the pool area and continued all the way to the lake. There was a large dock there, housing two speed boats and various other recreational vehicles. I had forgotten how beautiful the lake was, even at night, and it was particularly lovely with the lights that reflected off the water from the neighboring estates - if they could be called neighbors. I saw none on the side of the lake that Kenny's house seemed to almost exclusively occupy, but there were several communities on the other side, twinkling halfway up the mountain like a Mediterranean island's village. Kenny pointed to something in the distance, and I squinted, trying to recognize what he was indicating.

"Do you see the green light?" he asked.

It took me a moment, but I located it and nodded. It was off to the right, away from the others, on a property that seemed to only feature one residence.

"That's their dock," Kenny said.

"Theirs?"

"Cartman and Kyle." Kenny was still staring at the green light, still smiling strangely. "They live there during the summer."

"My God," I said, shuddering as I tried to picture their life together. "Do you see them?"

"I haven't yet."

"How long have you lived here?"

"Several years."

"And they - they've just returned to town?"

"They've had that place ever since they were married, I think."

"I see," I said, surprised that they weren't in contact. Kenny had parted with all of us on good terms, though Kyle and I had both urged him to stay and finish school. He had a home life situation that we had only a small understanding of, but apparently it was unbearable for him by the age of seventeen. "How on earth did you make all this money?" I asked, drunk enough to be crass.

"Oh, you know," Kenny said. "This and that. Stocks and bonds. I was taken under the wing of a brilliant investor. Come inside, we should eat."

We ate like kings that night: lobster and steak, piles of fresh vegetables expertly prepared, and a perfectly caramelized creme brulee for dessert. Kenny explained that he employed a gourmet chef along with the rest of his cooking staff, and only then did I begin to realize how empty the place felt, with so many servants bustling about to suit the needs of one man. I mentioned nothing about it, not wanting to be insensitive. Kenny had always been somewhat aloof: a loner, I would have called him, back then.

Champagne was served with the meal, and I drank my share of it, though my head was beginning to ache from all the booze and the late dinner. We took coffee in his towering library after dinner, and I tried to hold my tongue but finally could not, owing to the alcohol.

"How did it happen between Cartman and Kyle?" I asked. "I know they both went to college here, but they - well, they never exactly got along when we were kids."

"There were moments when they did," Kenny said, and I thought of that summer before our senior year of high school - that particular afternoon, what the four of us did, those hours that I was certain none of us would ever forget. I wasn't sure he was referring to that, so I kept it in.

"It's still odd," I said, downplaying my real feelings about the idea of them together. It was macabre, depressing, a kind of moral failure that I felt I'd had a part in. "I suppose I'd like to see them, though. Perhaps we could pay them a visit together?"

"Perhaps," Kenny said, avoiding my eyes. He stood, set his coffee down, and smiled at me. "You're probably tired," he said, and I took that as my cue to head toward the guesthouse. A butler showed me there, and I found it much more homey and comfortable than the grand rooms in the mansion: there was even an old quilt folded over the back of the sofa in the main room. I took it to bed with me and slept well.

I stayed in bed late the next morning, something I had not done in some time, my internship having involved a commute that got me up at six o'clock. It was a bright, hot summer day when I finally emerged from the guesthouse, feeling under-dressed amongst the surrounding grandeur. It was strange to breathe the mountain air again, and to recognize it as the smell of home, though Colorado was far from home-like to me then. It was the smell of the past, more than anything: long summer days spent with my best friends, traipsing through the woods on invented adventures and staying out as late as we could. I thought of Kyle and cast a glance at the lake. The green light was not visible during the day.

The servants were underfoot as soon as I stepped inside, preparing fresh coffee and taking my order for breakfast. I asked only for some eggs and toast, and then inquired as to the whereabouts of my host.

"Mr. McCormick is in town on business this morning," a butler explained. "He hopes to entertain you again in the evening."

I was actually relieved: though it had been good to see Kenny, there was something a bit awkward and hard to place about this new persona he'd created for himself, and we scarcely knew each other anymore. When the butler asked if he could be of service to me after my breakfast had been consumed and cleared away, I requested the telephone number for the Cartman estate across the way. Five minutes later I held it in my hand, written in ink on a piece of stationary that was monogrammed in gold foil: _KMM_. I sat with it for some minutes, wondering what Kenny's middle name was, and I began to sweat as I reached into my pocket for my cell phone. I thought of waiting until the next day to call, but in the end I could only wait fifteen minutes before dialing the number.

A maid answered, naturally.

"Cartman residence."

"Ah, hello," I said, not sure how to proceed. "Is Mr. Broflovski available?"

"There's no one here by that name, sir."

Of course there wasn't. "Mr. Kyle Cartman," I said, vexed.

"He's out shopping, I believe. Shall I give him a message?"

"Yes, please." I cleared my throat, which had begun to constrict. "Tell him his old friend Stan Marsh is in town, and that I'd like to see him if he's free. I'm staying with Mr. McCormick, across the lake." I realized I didn't know the number for the house, but, like magic, the butler reappeared and provided me with it. The maid assured me that she would relay the message to Kyle. I hung up, my heart pounding, and decided to go for a swim in that magnificent pool rather than hang about waiting for a returned call that might not come.

It was a beautiful day for lounging about near the water, and I'd almost managed to forget my panic about the thought of seeing Kyle when the butler came down to inform me that Mr. Cartman was on the line. He was carrying a portable phone from the house, and I accepted it with a damp, shaking hand.

"Kyle?" I said, feeling boyish just for having said that name.

"Stan!" It wasn't Kyle. I recognized the booming voice of Eric Cartman instantly. You could somehow hear that he was overweight when he spoke. "You're in town? Since when?"

"Since yesterday," I said, and I felt embarrassed for admitting that I had barely waited twenty-four hours before trying to get in touch with Kyle - his husband. "I'm staying with Kenny, here on the lake."

"That's what my servant said, but I thought she'd misunderstood. Kenny is living on the lake? Has he built himself a shack or something?"

"No, actually. He's become wealthy - you'll probably know the house, the big white one, across the water from yours. You didn't know that he was back in Colorado?"

"I had no idea. I'd assumed he'd died in some crack den before the age of twenty. As one would, yes? Anyhow, Kyle and I want to see you. You'll come for lunch tomorrow at noon. It's 230 Lakeview Road, the big house with the waterfall at the start of the driveway, you can't miss it. Bring Kenny if you want. I can't believe he has money - what does he do?"

"Stockbroking," I said, awkwardly. Cartman snorted.

"Interesting," he said, and I thought of him as a scheming child, the way his eyes would sharpen when he'd uncovered some personal weakness that he planned to exploit.

"How's Kyle?" I asked, desperate to speak to him - and terrified, too. "We haven't. It's been so long. I'm sorry I missed the wedding."

"I wasn't aware that you'd been invited," Cartman said. "Never mind - Kyle is fine. We'll see you tomorrow." And then he hung up.

After that phone call, no amount of swimming or sunshine could settle my nerves, so I asked for a beer. A high end pilsner was promptly provided in a frosted pint glass. I finished it quickly, and another was in reach before I could even ask for it. I napped the rest of the afternoon away under the shade of an umbrella, half-drunk. By the time I woke, the sun was going down. I sat up and turned, looking across the lake, but the green light had not been ignited yet.

Kenny did not return until almost seven o'clock. I was playing billiards by myself in the library, eating handfuls of mixed nuts that the butler had brought. Kenny appeared in a well-tailored suit, and only then did it occur to me how handsome he had become. I'd never thought of him that way as a boy, even that summer, that day, when I'd seen him naked and ecstatic. The three of us had not paid much attention to each other that afternoon; our focus was elsewhere.

"Are you alright?" Kenny asked. Perhaps I'd flushed.

"Yes," I said. "Good day at the office?"

He grinned. "It was alright. I'll bring you to the city some day when I'm not so busy, to meet my mentor."

"Who's your mentor?"

"Damien Thorn. Do you know the name?"

"I don't - I'm not very in tune to the financial world."

"Good for you." He squeezed my shoulder, regarding me warmly. "Should we get dinner? They've made shepherd's pie, I think."

"My favorite," I said, surprised he remembered. Kyle had always complained when they served it at the school cafeteria, but I'd loved it. "Listen," I said when Kenny turned to head for the dining room. "I, um. I spoke to Cartman today. To Eric."

"Oh?" Kenny's expression remained neutral. "What did he have to say?"

"Well, I'd called up there hoping to get in touch with Kyle. Cartman intercepted, of course, but he did invite me for lunch tomorrow, and you're invited, too."

"Ha," Kenny said, and he looked away. "I've got meetings all day tomorrow. Sorry. Tell them I said hello."

"Sure," I said, sensing that I shouldn't pursue the subject. I did dare one comment: "It will be so weird to see them after all this time."

"Maybe," Kenny said. "Maybe not. Should we have wine with dinner, or would you prefer beer?"

There was a certain tension between us at dinner, and I wondered if I'd angered him, though he was perfectly pleasant on the surface, quizzing me about my internship and my career goals. After eating we played a game of billiards, and he wished me goodnight. I returned to the guest house, turned the air conditioning down to sixty to combat the muggy heat of the evening, and wrapped myself in that quilt. I dreamed about Kyle, but even in the dream I never got a clear look at his face. He was always just ahead of me, turning out of sight.

I slept poorly and woke feeling ragged, unprepared for the task of confronting my past and bearing witness to Cartman and Kyle's life together. I showered and tried to muster an appetite for breakfast, requesting pancakes. They were fluffy and delicious, served with three kinds of fresh fruit compote and some very high quality maple syrup. I was too queasy to properly enjoy them, and when Kenny's driver appeared to offer to take me to the Cartman estate - how did he know? - I was afraid for a moment that I would lose my breakfast.

"Would you rather go by car or boat?" the driver asked, and I chose to arrive by boat, despite the risk of sea sickness. I thought the air on the lake might clear my head.

The trip across the lake was too short, and as we drew closer I saw that Cartman's estate almost rivaled Kenny's - though not quite. We were received at the dock by a butler who was dressed in a uniform even fussier than the ones Kenny's staff wore: white gloves, coat tails, totally inappropriate for summer. Cartman had come from modest means, too, though not so modest as Kenny's, and despite his mother's income he'd always seemed to get whatever he wanted, whether it was mountains of junk food, the newest toys, or a brand new car for his sixteenth birthday.

As I was led up toward the house I was taken off guard by the appearance of Kyle on the lawn. He was walking down from the courtyard, which featured a pool with an infinity edge that spilled down into another, larger pool. Kyle beamed when he saw me, and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to dash across the yard to him like a boy.

"You look so good!" I said, unable to suppress everything I was feeling. Kyle snorted at the compliment and threw his arms around me, hugging me tightly. It was painful to hold him, too wanted for too long, and I pulled back after a few pats to his back, examining him more closely. He had been an ugly duckling as a child but had flowered in high school, and while that word might not often be applied to teenage boys, there was no other way to describe Kyle's transformation from a child who was all knees and elbows to a lithe, pretty young man with sparkling green eyes and a famously squeezable rump. His awkward curls had been tamed by some magic hair products, and they were still his best feature, falling in waves that were soft and wild at the same time, reddish orange in glowing hues, like the skin of a ripe pomegranate. Kyle was blushing in the same attractively mottled fashion; he had pale skin, a very obvious blush.

"I can't believe you're here," he said, holding on to the collar of my shirt with both hands. I was blushing, too, I'm sure. "You look the same."

"Do I?" I tried to remember the last time we'd met. He'd come to visit me once during my freshman year at Trinity, but he'd been strange on that trip, moody and quiet. We'd lost touch after that.

"Yes, just the same," Kyle said, patting my cheeks now. "I'm so glad you've come. We have so much to talk about - why didn't you come to my wedding?"

He asked this without artifice, as if he truly couldn't imagine a reason. I was stunned speechless for a moment.

"I-"

"You didn't even return the RSVP card! Or send a gift. But never mind, who cares. Look at this stupid house." We both turned to it.

"It's beautiful," I said, overcome. I'd forgotten how much I once cherished every foolish little thing he said.

"Is it?" he said, squinting, his hands braced against the cheeks of his ass. He leaned back a bit, pressing his chest outward, still looking at the house. "It's like a museum of greed." He grabbed my arm and squeezed it hard. "What is this about Kenny living nearby?" he asked. Something had changed in his eyes; he looked almost afraid.

"He's right across the water," I said, and there was no mistaking it then: panic flooded Kyle's eyes, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints.

"There you are!" someone shouted across the lawn: Cartman. He was trundling toward us, looking winded already, wearing a ridiculous seersucker suit that made him look forty years old. That he was balding and overweight didn't help matters, nor did the fact that he was in the company of some strikingly handsome young man with hair darker than mine and an effortlessly refined style of dress. When they came closer I was stunned to recognize this man as Craig Tucker, my boyhood rival in sports and slouching handsomeness.

"Look who's here," Cartman said, taking Craig by the shoulders and giving him a shake. "It's a proper reunion. Except - where's Kenny?"

"He had to work," I said, and I shook hands with Craig, feeling awkward. Craig was looking at me like he always had, on the verge of a smirk, sizing me up.

"Work, ha!" Cartman said. "Yes, I did some looking into the sort of work Kenny's doing these days. Interesting stuff. But fuck Kenny, if he can't be bothered to put it aside for a day to see us. Come up, I've got appletinis."

"He wouldn't listen when I told him those were very unfashionable," Craig said, speaking to me. Kyle had grown quiet, and was keeping a few feet back as he followed us up to the house.

"I'd love an appletini," I said, honestly. I liked unfashionably sweet drinks, and needed the shot of courage.

"So, Stanley," Cartman said while a white-gloved attendant served our martinis. "You're in Boston or something? Cleaning rivers?"

"Connecticut," I said. "Environment consultation - sometimes rivers are involved. I've just completed an internship." That sounded so unimpressive; I grabbed for a drink and gulped from it. "I'll probably go to grad school." If I could find the money. So far I hadn't had any luck.

"Stan has principles," Kyle said, as if to preemptively scold Cartman for his judgment of my professional life.

"Here's to principles!" Cartman bellowed, and he lifted his glass, the neon green concoction glinting in the sunlight. "And rivers," he said. "I'm sure they're important somehow. I suppose you know that my company is doing very well."

"Of course," I said. I'd kept a hateful eye on Cartman's stock prices ever since I received that wedding invitation. He'd dropped out of college to found a paving company at age 20, and somehow ended up with state highway contracts in Colorado, Utah and California. Now he owned Cartman Construction, an international conglomerate that almost exclusively paved and maintained every road in America and had swallowed up hundreds of smaller companies in the past three years. "What are you doing these days?" I asked Craig, who was still studying me with an exacting stare.

"Landscape architecture," Craig said. "Cartman has brought me a lot of business over the years."

"And you?" I said to Kyle, already bored with Craig. Kyle had stretched out on a lounge chair with a pristine white cushion and was staring up at us as we spoke, using his hand to shade his eyes from the sun. He was wearing tight jeans that seemed to have been designed to lovingly caress the exact proportions of his ass, and an airy peasant blouse that was possibly intended for a woman.

"Who, me?" Kyle said when we were all staring at him, as if my question had woken him from a nap. "Oh, Stan. You're sweet. I don't do anything."

"He spends my money for a living," Cartman said, fondly or with disgust, I couldn't tell.

"Kyle, don't undersell yourself," Craig said. "You're an art collector, and you have your charities."

"What charities?" I asked. Kyle had fixed a viper-like stare on Craig, but his mouth was relaxed.

"All sorts of shit," Cartman answered for him. "Jewish things, mainly. He says I owe it to the world. Is that why you married me, Kyle? To steal my money and give it to Jews?"

Kyle said nothing. His eyes shifted to me, and he smiled as if he hadn't heard Cartman at all.

"Do you remember that girl Bebe?" Kyle asked.

"Yes, of course." She was the last girl I'd slept with before I gave up and settled on an all-male diet.

"She's a Scientologist!" Kyle said, and he laughed madly. "Isn't that hilarious?"

"I think it's sad," Craig said. "She's not even allowed to speak to her mother. It's a cult, and she's too smart for that."

"Yes, that is sad. And surprising." I felt suddenly dizzy from the heat. I kept wanting to bring up Kenny and then remembering how Kyle's eyes had changed when we spoke about him. "Token is a French teacher," I said, absurdly. He was one of the few old schoolmates I still kept up with.

"His parents must be so disappointed," Cartman said. "Come on, let's go in. I'm roasting."

"I thought I smelled bacon," Kyle said, and I looked at Craig uncertainly, but both he and Cartman seemed disinterested in what I presumed was an insult.

"Kyle gets on me about my weight," Cartman said as we walked toward the house. "He worries I'll die and leave him everything."

"It keeps me up nights," Kyle said. He smiled at Cartman sweetly - sarcastically? ironically? - and took his arm as we made our way into an open sitting room with five rattan ceiling fans spinning lazily overhead.

"How did you two, ah-?" Again I glanced at Craig, and this time he met my gaze. "Reconnect, after Eric left school?"

"Don't call him Eric," Kyle said, and he flopped onto one of the many overstuffed sofas in the room.

"How does anyone do anything?" Cartman said. He motioned to one of his servants, who hurried over with another appletini. "We ran into each other, we fucked, I bought him a meal." He sat down beside Kyle and patted his knee, hoisting the drink as if to toast his luck. "Now here we are. Stan, have you been into Denver at all since you've been back?"

"No. Well, to the airport, but-"

"We'll go tomorrow. You and I, two businessmen. There are people I could introduce you to. Unless you've got plans with Kenny."

"I haven't." I glanced at Kyle, who was reclining with feline indifference. He closed his eyes and sighed softly. It was fetching, in his old way; I saw Cartman notice, too. He licked the rim of his martini glass, watching Kyle.

"Yes, then we'll go," Cartman said. "I'm always glad to help an old friend."

We moved into a cooler room with a forbiddingly long table for lunch, all of us gathered at one end. Kyle picked his food apart the way he always had, extracting the diced onion and capers from his chicken salad. He caught me watching him do so and smiled. Cartman was blathering about something: finding good help, accusations of embezzlement that he'd defeated, and the ensuing malicious prosecution lawsuit that he expected to win.

"I've always had public opinion in my favor," Cartman said. "People understand that I'm ruthless but fair." He sounded drunk. I tried to catch Kyle's eye again, but he was looking at the mayonnaise-coated spires of his fork. He licked them, and I flushed at the sight of that white cream on the tip of his tongue, wondering if he'd known that I was watching.

A butler came to the table and murmured something into Cartman's ear, halting his monologue. Cartman apologized for the interruption and went to get the phone. I saw Kyle and Craig exchange a look.

"I can't believe you haven't seen Kenny in all the time you've-"

"Shh," Kyle said, so harshly that I was hurt. "I'm trying to listen."

"To what?" I could hear the low rumble of Cartman's voice from the next room, but I couldn't make out the words.

"Eric's got some piece of ass in Denver," Kyle said, not even whispering. "He thinks we don't know." He smiled at Craig.

"Piece of -?" My stomach dropped with embarrassment as my heart lifted with childish hope.

"Do go with him tomorrow," Kyle said, his gaze shifting unkindly to mine. "I want to hear all about it. Or, who knows, maybe I don't. As for Kenny, what can I say? I didn't even know he was alive."

Cartman returned before I could remark on that. Craig and I shared some chit chat about environmental concerns in landscape design, and Kyle mostly kept quiet while Cartman broke in here and there to correct some statement we'd made. After the meal, Cartman disappeared to field another phone call, and Kyle escorted Craig and I down to the boats.

"You could ride together," he said. "Craig's staying on your side of the lake. Or on Kenny's side, I suppose I should say. He really owns that white house?"

"Yes," I said, and I noticed the green light at the top of their dock. Up close and in daylight it looked like nothing special. "You should come visit sometime."

"Mhmm," Kyle said. He was staring at Kenny's house, his face blank. "Well, I hope we'll see a lot more of you," he said, to me. "It could be like when we were kids, couldn't it? Just running around all summer, sweaty and sticky and-" He looked at Craig. "Not that kind of sticky," he said.

"I made no comment," Craig said.

"But you know what I mean," Kyle said, grabbing me by my forearms. "Stan, don't you?"

"Of course," I said, and I gave him an impulsive, alcohol-fueled kiss on the forehead. "I'd like that very much," I said. "My summers never quite worked without you."

"You two are both so handsome, with your dark hair," Kyle said, and then he sort of drifted away, the peasant shirt billowing across his narrow back as he walked back up toward the house.

"That was a suggestion that we sleep together," Craig said after we'd boarded the boat. I guffawed uncomfortably.

"Kyle's changed," I said.

"Has he? I never knew him very well back then. You did, I understand."

That made me wonder what Kyle had told him about us - the four of us, and how things had unfurled. I started thinking about that day, _the four of us_, and perhaps because of the resulting melancholy, I invited Craig into the guesthouse for a drink.

I showed him around, and in the bedroom we began to undress each other rather unceremoniously. I wasn't sure what to expect with him and was glad when he took charge. I flopped onto the bed and closed my eyes while he took me, imagining, as I always did when I was impaled, that I was Kyle - or, more accurately, that this was happening to Kyle, and I was able to feel what it was like - had been like - for him.

"You've got to reintroduce me to Kenny," Craig said when we were having that drink together afterward. I was barely dressed, but Craig looked perfectly composed, except that his hair was sweaty at the temples. "I can't believe he made something of himself and none of us even heard about it."

"Is Cartman really cheating on Kyle?" I asked, hung up on that. I really wanted to ask if Cartman and Kyle still had sex with each other. Craig rolled his eyes.

"Yes, and with someone very tacky, I think. I hope you'll get to meet her."

"Her?"

"Mhmm, well, you know what I mean. Him."

I didn't actually know what he meant, but I nodded. I said goodnight to Craig, who was borne away by one of Kenny's drivers, to the 'shameful' condo where he was staying for the summer while his house in San Francisco was being renovated. When he was gone I puttered about a bit, then went to the main house expecting dinner.

"Mr. McCormick sends his regrets," said the butler who served it. "But he's been delayed in the city and doesn't expect to be back before midnight."

"He must be very busy," I said, increasingly suspicious. Cartman had made some remark about Kenny's business being 'interesting,' and though I didn't want to hear about it from him, I'd meant to ask Craig if he knew the name Damien Thorn.

I ate alone, and on the walk back to the guesthouse something made me turn, a feeling of being watched. I thought I saw a figure passing back into shadow in one of the upstairs rooms: Kenny? I shuddered and looked toward the green light, which was glowing out over the lake now. I had a sense of Kyle watching me then, or at least looking in my direction. Craig had fucked me hard; my ass was stinging. Deliriously, I wondered if Kyle could sense this - feel this - as he sensed my presence from across the lake, and as I unhappily sensed that Kenny was watching me hurry back to the guesthouse, unnerved. Suddenly I was residing in a town full of ghosts.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Thanks very much to those of you who left reviews, followed or otherwise gave me notes - I appreciate it, and I'm glad someone other than me cares about this! I want to write a chapter every day - or every weekday, at least - and get this done, so we'll see how that goes.

* * *

I was not looking forward to the trip into the city with Cartman, where I expected him to try to humiliate me among his business associates by describing me as his 'unemployed friend' who was more principled than prosperous. Worse still was the prospect of possibly meeting his lover and being grilled about the details by Kyle at some point. Resentfully, I dressed to impress in my best suit, which was not appropriate for summer but would have to do. When Cartman arrived to pick me up I was already sweating. I was surprised that he was driving himself, but he seemed to want to show off his masculine handling of the vehicle, which was an expensive-looking thing with two doors, bright yellow and low to the ground.

"Have you seen one of these before?" Cartman asked when I climbed into the car. He was wearing better clothes than he had been yesterday but still looked a bit clownish in a light brown suit over a red shirt that was unbuttoned to reveal chest hair. Mirrored aviator sunglasses completed the look.

"What, one of these cars?" I asked, wondering why we were idling in Kenny's driveway. Kenny was in the city already, or wherever he went for work. I had not seen him at breakfast.

"It's a CCX," Cartman said, stroking the polished steering wheel. "A _Koenigsegg_. Do you know the company?"

"I'm afraid I don't." I had driven a Corolla during college, and had sold it after graduation. I'd been using a bicycle to get to and from my internship.

"They're Swedish," Cartman said. "Nordic, you know, the best designers of pretty much everything. How much do you think I paid for this?"

"I don't know, Eric. A million?"

"A million, ha! Try two, after all my upgrades. Wait until you hear the sound system."

I didn't have to wait long: he blasted 'Carry On My Wayward Son' as we sped down Kenny's driveway at an alarming speed. I had to admit that the car handled spectacularly, even in Cartman's reckless hands, and that it was thrilling to so suddenly be traveling at sixty miles an hour as we headed toward the city. Cartman was shouting details about the car over the music: dual overhead camshafts, twin-supercharged engines, one hundred miles per hour in 6.6 seconds. I nodded along, attempting an admiring smile. I had always been able to tolerate Cartman's posturing better than the other two. I wondered if he and Kyle still had vicious fights over his pomposity, and if they had snarling, biting sex in the midst of them now.

"We're taking the next exit?" I said when we were on the highway, in a turn-only lane. I was becoming concerned about the way Cartman was weaving through traffic, my rear end clenching anxiously.

"Yes," Cartman said, though we weren't quite in the city yet. "I want to see my girl."

I swallowed my dread and prepared myself to encounter the kind of 'girl' Cartman would visit on the outskirts of Denver. We pulled into a gas station-cum-repair shop that looked much too low class to service Cartman's car, and I was astounded to recognize a grease-stained man in coveralls who seemed to be the proprietor: Clyde Donovan.

"You remember this chump, I'm sure," Cartman said, and he smirked at me before climbing out of the car. I got out as well, deeply confused.

"Where's the one you said you'd sell me?" Clyde asked, eying the car. He didn't seem to recognize me.

"It's being valued," Cartman said. "My accounts man is looking at it."

"I thought you said I could have it for ten thousand?"

"That was an estimate, Clyde, not an oral contract. Look who's here with me. Our old friend Stan."

"Oh," Clyde said. He didn't smile. He'd been strange since the death of his mother, morose and serious, even as a child. "Butters will want to see you," he said.

"Butters?" I said. Another name I hadn't thought of since I was eighteen. "He's here?"

"Stan!"

I looked up to see my cheerful former playmate just as I remembered him: bright eyed and grinning widely, petite but a bit paunchy, fluffy and blond in spirit as well as appearance. The only difference was that he'd grown his hair almost to his shoulders and was wearing a sun dress with a flower print. He also had some very loud pink lipstick on, which left a mark on my cheek after he'd kissed me hello.

"It's wonderful to see you!" he said. He looked at Cartman and smiled strangely. "Hello to you, too."

"Afternoon," Cartman said brusquely. "Clyde, could you get us some Dr. Pepper?" he asked, going for his wallet. He held up a few dollars and waved them at Clyde as if to introduce him to the concept of monetary compensation. "Diet for me. Stan can have the real thing, I think."

"Sure," Clyde muttered, and he went into the gas station to fetch the drinks. Butters was still smiling at Cartman, lifting one foot to wrap his ankle around the other. He had flip flops on. They looked dirty.

"I need to see you," Cartman murmured, drawing close to him. "Take the bus to the city. I'll meet you at the apartment."

"Alright," Butters said. He was positively swooning, worrying his delicate hands together. When we were young, Butters had been the only one of us who Cartman had managed to impress.

Clyde returned with the sodas, Cartman paid for them, and we left. I was still reeling, not sure if I should comment on any of it.

"It's a dump," Cartman said, flicking his head back in the direction of the garage. "They live upstairs. One bedroom. They don't even have a dishwasher."

"My God," I said, pretending to be horrified about that particular detail.

"It's good for him to get away from all of that for a while. He's happier in the city, but of course they can't afford to live there. Not that Clyde cares much about what makes him happy."

"Butters - and Clyde? They're together."

"Wake up, Stanley, where have you been? Your distrust of Facebook annoys me. I know it annoys Kyle, too. Anyway, yes, they're together. Married, even. For whatever that's worth."

"How long has Butters been dressing like that?"

"Ever since I've known him. He did it when we were kids, and I used to dress him up in high school and fuck him until he squeaked. Fantastic little asshole. Naturally hairless! I'm addicted to it, as you can see."

I struggled not to throw up in my lap. It wasn't that I couldn't appreciate the appeal of a cute ass - of course I could - but I didn't want to think about it in terms of Butters, and especially not in terms of Cartman. I thought of Kyle, and Cartman making similar appraisals of him, and my stomach lurched again.

"I take it Kyle doesn't know," I said, though I was aware that he did. He didn't know, at least, the identity of Cartman's 'piece' in the city.

"A man has needs, Stanley." Cartman's face had darkened, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel. "If anyone's to blame for me going elsewhere for satisfaction, it's Kyle."

"Oh?" I cannot possibly convey how pleased I was to imagine that things weren't going well between those two in the bedroom.

"He'll let me fuck him as much as I like," Cartman said, crushing me. "But he lacks affection. Softness. He's cold. It was his Jew mother, mark my words. She made him into an angry little snake."

"Sheila was affectionate with him."

"Well, yes, overly so! She tormented him with her attentions. You have no idea."

"I have some idea, Eric. I was there."

"Ah, so you were. At any rate, you'll see. Butters is my little lap dog. Would it kill Kyle to sit in my lap every once in a while?"

"It might," I said, and I smiled as if I were joking when he sneered at me.

In Denver, we parked in the garage of an unassuming apartment building near the Hyatt. The interior hallways were basic, but the mountain views from the apartment that Cartman apparently owned were nice. It was a corner unit, decorated here and there with personal touches that reminded me of Butters: while the couch was black leather, more to Cartman's taste, there was a fuzzy purple blanket folded over the arm, and some colorful pillows strewn about. Cartman went directly to the kitchen and got us each a beer. I still hadn't opened my Dr. Pepper, which I'd left in the car.

"To freedom," Cartman said, toasting me.

"From what exactly?" I asked. Kyle? The thought that Cartman could have him the way he did and want to be free of him was infuriating.

"From judgment," Cartman said, and his eyes were cold for a moment. "Sit down, Stan, you're making me nervous."

Butters arrived half an hour later, wearing black heels and a different dress. This one was made from a heavier, felt-like material, cranberry-colored. He'd put his hair into two short braids and looked quite convincingly female, especially when he sat beside Cartman on the couch, his slender knees bent on Cartman's thigh, and started digging around in his handbag. When he found the pack of cigarettes he'd been looking for Cartman produced a lighter from his pocket. I declined to join them, annoyed that they'd apparently both forgotten about my asthma.

"They're selling puppies on the corner by the Rite Aid," Butters said, and he tugged on Cartman's shirt, pulling it open to reveal more chest hair. "Eric, can I get one? Please? We could keep him here."

"You know I don't like dogs," Cartman said.

"What kind of person doesn't like dogs?" Butters asked, appealing to me. I said nothing, disgusted by this entire display and wishing that I was back at the lake, lounging about with Kyle. "They're so cute!" Butters said. "And they were crying when I pet them, like they knew I wanted to be their mommy."

"They? What, you want them all now?"

"There are only five!"

"We'll see," Cartman said, and he eyed me, the cigarette clamped between his lips. "Do you mind if we have some time alone?" he asked, and I realized why he'd brought me. He wanted me to bear witness not only to his ability to drive fast in an expensive car but also to the availability of the naturally hairless ass that he would soon be fucking.

"It's fine," I said, simply to get rid of the cigarette smoke.

They disappeared into a back bedroom, hand in hand like children. Soon I could hear Butters giggling from within. I thought about going for a walk or even going down to look at those puppies, but my curiosity got the better of me. What sort of lover Cartman was held meaning in terms of what Kyle got up to in bed with him, and I was depressingly interested in that, though also aware that a man could be two or three very different people in the bedroom, depending on whom he was making love to.

Butters put on a show for my listening pleasure, probably at Cartman's urging, though Butters had always been sort of shameless in an oblivious way. I wondered how Clyde had come to marry him, and I supposed it was another thing that no one would ever bother to explain to me, like how Cartman and Kyle had ended up together. I thought of asking Kyle about it again when we were alone together, but would Cartman even allow us to be, and did I really want to know?

I heard grunting, a bed knocking into a wall, and Butters' breathy shouts. I'm ashamed to admit that it aroused me; Butters was not bad looking, especially in drag. I felt like a puppy that had been locked out of the room while its owners had some mysterious fun without him. Craig had left me his number, and I thought of calling him when I got back to the guesthouse, bending over the bed again. But it wasn't really what I wanted: I longed to be the active party, though not if I was acting on Craig.

Butters screamed Cartman's name when he (presumably) came. I thought of Kyle telling me not to call him that, _Eric_, and how Kyle had referred to him by that name after saying so. I splashed cold water on my face at the kitchen sink; Cartman had put the air conditioning on when we came in, but the place was still sweltering, stuffy from disuse. I was fighting off memories about Kyle's noises. He'd cried softly, in pleasure, holding us to him.

"Now can we go buy the puppies?" Butters asked when he bounced from the room, his hair down now, slightly matted and tangled. Otherwise he looked revelatory and refreshed, his cheeks blushing bright pink, the lipstick kissed away.

"You know you can't have puppies," Cartman said. He came into the kitchen and eyed me as if daring me to complain about any of this. "Not unless you leave Clyde and let me keep you here full time."

"I couldn't," Butters said. He glanced at me nervously, pressing his fists together. "He'd never stop crying if I left him. I couldn't do it."

"Yes, yes," Cartman muttered. He opened another beer for himself.

"If I can't have puppies, can I at least invite my friends over?" Butters asked. "I can't entertain at home. I wish I could give parties, you know it's my dearest wish-"

"Only a few people," Cartman grumbled, and he chugged down half the beer.

Butters' guests were a group we would have referred to as a Melvin Brigade back in school. There was one like Dougie, squirrely and small with unfashionable glasses, a gangly drag queen who reminded me of Pip, and a strung-out gentleman who brought Tweek to mind as he sweated and paced about, making frequent trips into the bathroom to run the faucet powerfully and snort something. Cartman joined him at one point, and I began to worry about how I would get home. Butters and his friends were drinking some sort of rum cocktail that I'd declined, since rum gives me awful stomachaches. I did wish for something stronger as the party continued and I filled up on Cartman's cheap beer.

"I don't see why we couldn't hire a dog sitter for while I'm not here," Butters said, beginning to get drunk and apparently still fixated on the puppies. "It's not as if you can't afford it, Eric."

"Shut up about what I can afford," Cartman said, and the sudden cruelty in his tone set me on edge. "You can have a puppy when you let me take you to get your nipples pierced."

"Clyde would know something was going on if I did! He's not completely stupid."

"That's a matter of opinion," Cartman said.

"Why don't you pierce yours, too, and see what Kyle says?"

A hush fell over the group, and Cartman's face hardened. He was staring at Butters, who was pretending not to notice his attention, toying with a scarf that the Pip-like character had around his neck.

"I've told you not to say his name," Cartman said. I wondered if I should try to intervene somehow, and looked at the bespectacled man desperately, judging him to be the most sensible. He seemed bored and was trying to discreetly pick his nose.

"Why don't you just leave Clyde, darling?" the Pip person said. I drank more beer and resolved to simply think of him as Pip. "Then we could pierce you all over."

"Maybe I don't want to be pierced," Butters said. He looked at me, pouting. "Have you got any piercings, Stan?"

"I don't, no."

"I grew up with Stan, too, you know," Butters said, laying his head on Pip's shoulder. They were on the couch together, nose-picker sitting on the end, Cartman and I across from them in chairs we'd dragged in from the kitchen. The drug-addled man was staring out the window, an unlit cigarette dangling between his lips. "I so admired Stan," Butters continued. "He was the ideal boy. Sweet and beautiful, but masculine, too. Look at that fine masculine jawline!"

"What was I, then?" Cartman asked. I could feel his rage beginning to surmount the other energies in the room, and even the man at the window turned to see what was happening. "What's my jawline like? It's not like Stan's. Do you want to go back to the bedroom and get fucked by him this time?"

"Eric, please," I said. "He's only drunk."

"I should have married Eric to begin with," Butters said. "Not that he asked. But we were so suited! He only had Kyle the once and couldn't forget it, but look where he is now, crawling back to me."

"You will not say his name in my presence again!" Cartman bellowed, standing. Butters raised his lip, suddenly looking more like a man than a woman. I wanted to know exactly what he understood about Cartman having had Kyle 'the once' back then. My heart was racing. I loosened my collar, waiting for this new tension to diffuse.

"Kyle," Butters drawled, and he laughed like it was a game. Then his face grew stricken and serious. "Kyle, Kyle, Kyle. I'll say it whenever I want! Kyle-"

Cartman yanked Butters up from the couch with a grunt and dragged him across the coffee table as if he was a doll, disturbing an ash tray and a number of glasses, melted ice sloshing everywhere. Butters was still shouting Kyle's name, struggling against Cartman's grip and beginning to cry. I leapt from my chair to assist somehow, but Pip stopped me before I could move toward the bedroom, where Cartman had taken Butters.

"Just let them," Pip said to me, gently, when I whirled to him with a look of confused annoyance. "It's how they are." From the bedroom we could hear the unmistakable sound of Butters being spanked hard on the ass while he continued wailing - wordlessly now. I did not hear Kyle's name from him again.

We drove back to the lake shortly after that, leaving Pip and the others to comfort Butters. I was upset and silent, and worried about Cartman's ability to drive. He was speeding even more outrageously than he had on the way there. I thought of what would happen if we were to crash and I became crippled in the aftermath. Kyle would leave Cartman, certainly, in an outrage about what he had done to me. Kyle would never forgive him, and would become my devoted nurse. I wondered if this would be worth losing the use of my legs.

"That's the problem with the ones who aren't cold," Cartman said as we neared the mountains. "You get the warmth, sure, but also the heat."

"I hope you didn't hurt him," I said. "Just because he's a man - you can't attack people like that." I wondered if he'd ever hit Kyle, and my blood boiled, my hands clenching into fists. But no: Kyle would never stand for that. He would hit back, would finish Cartman off and have the butlers bury the body in the yard.

"What, you've never been with someone who spanks you to settle an argument?" Cartman was grinning. I snarled at him. In fact, I had been the spank-er once, during a short-lived thing at college. I did it at my partners' request; it wasn't for me. "He's fine," Cartman said. "He loves being taken in hand. That's the problem - Clyde won't do it. Butters ran off with Clyde to escape his father, that totalitarian asshole, but it turns out he's been looking to get back into that sort of situation all along, if you catch my drift."

"Ah," I said, tired of hearing him talk.

"Freud," Cartman said. "And so forth. Look at Kyle, same thing."

"My head is pounding," I said. In different circumstances I would have been quick to point out Cartman's willingness to compare himself to Sheila Broflovski, but I had no desire to say another word to him, only to escape his company as soon as possible. For that reason, his speed was a blessing.

The sun was going down by the time we reached the house, a few stars coming out overhead. I wasn't sure what to say to Cartman upon parting. When he braked in front of stone columns of Kenny's mansion, we both jerked forward against our seat belts.

"Tell Kyle I said hello," I said, half-expecting to be pummeled for daring to utter that name.

"Give my regards to Kenny," Cartman said. "You two aren't fucking, are you?"

"Of course not."

"Mhm. Good, you'd do better with Craig. This business with Kenny is no good. Who does he think he is, living in this house? What kind of bachelor needs a house like this?"

"I've got to go," I said. "Goodnight."

I went to the guesthouse, showered under hot water for as long as I could stand it, and passed out naked in bed. There, I slept deeply and blessedly had no dreams. When I awoke it was nighttime, and someone was knocking on my door. I ran to answer it, naked except for that quilt, which I'd wrapped around my waist. I somehow knew it would be Kyle.

"Well?" Kyle said when I pulled open the door. I saw him notice my lack of clothing, his eyes sliding downward and then up again. He smiled. "I'm sorry. Is Craig here?"

"No, of course not! I – come in."

"I can't, I have to sneak back in a moment. I only wanted to ask if you'd met the culprit."

"The culprit?"

"Homewrecker, whatever. Cartman's side dish."

"It was Butters," I said, taken off guard by how badly it hurt to know that he truly cared, and that this was the sole reason that he'd come to my door. Kyle stared at me for a few moments, and I took in what he was wearing: tight little swim trunks and a baggy sweater, worn old loafers. In the moonlight, his skin seemed to glow.

"Butters," he said. "Oh, of course. How stupid of me not to expect that. Anyway, Craig tells me the two of you fucked? That's good."

"Don't – he. He told you that, eh?" I felt like a cheater myself, my whole chest heating with guilt.

"You two are very well matched. For a summer thing, I mean. Not forever. But what's forever, right? Hardly anything."

"Some things," I said, feeling like I might cry for the first time in years.

"Look at you," Kyle said, and he touched my chest, his fingertips skimming down over my pectorals and toward my stomach, making me shiver. "My friend. My beautiful friend Stan. Alright, I've got to go. Butters, eh? That's useful."

"Wait!" I called when he fled, jogging across the lawn. He turned back, far away already. "Will you – can I see you tomorrow?"

"I don't know!" he said. "We shouldn't. You've got no idea who your host is."

With that, he ran for the dock. I was tempted to follow, even wearing only the quilt, but I was too bowled over by what he'd said to have proper control of my legs. Who was my host, anyway? I was beginning to feel as if I hadn't known Kenny at all even back then.

For dinner, I dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, too exhausted to muster a real outfit. I headed toward the house, but before I could reach the side door near the butler pantry that I'd been using as a point of entry, I noticed something down by the lake. A man, standing near the dock, staring at the water. It was Kenny, and I debated whether or not to approach him. There was a forbidding air about him even from a distance. Still, I was out of sorts enough to need some bracing company, even if it was that of my enigmatic host.

"Are you alright?" I called on approach, not wanting to take him completely off guard. He turned, hands in his pockets, and smiled. He was dressed for the day of business that I assumed he had just concluded.

"Am I alright?" he said when I came to stand beside him. "Yes, of course."

I looked across the lake and saw what he was staring at: the green light from Cartman's dock.

"I went to the city with Cartman today," I said, deciding not to mention that I'd also seen Kyle, since he'd run away in fear. "It was a bad scene. He's having an affair, cheating on Kyle. Did you know that?"

"No," Kenny said, looking to the dock again, the green light. I huffed.

"Well, it's. It's not good. Cartman is a disgusting boor. I'm lucky he didn't crash that fancy car of his with me in it."

"Everything about Cartman is a crash waiting to happen," Kenny said. He turned and squeezed my arm. "Relax! We'll be here to survey the wreckage when he's destroyed himself."

"Perhaps," I said, growing uncomfortable. "Should we eat?"

"Yes! And you can help me with the arrangements for my party, if you're interested."

"Party?"

"It's the party I'm hosting on the longest day of the year. The solstice, or whatever. Don't you always wait for the longest day of the year and miss it?"

"Ah. I suppose?"

"I'm not going to miss it this year. I'm going to have a tremendous party – everyone around here will hear about it and come."

"Even Kyle?" I said, testing him. He smiled.

"Maybe," he said. "You've seen him more recently than me – do you think Kyle is the type of person who would go to that type of party?"

I was rapidly feeling alarmed by this conversation, and I rearranged my features so that this wouldn't show, putting a mild and friendly expression on.

"I think Kyle would be game for that sort of party," I said, and when he smiled again I knew that we were both thinking of the same thing, and that his smile was no more genuine than mine.

"Come on, then," he said, resting a hand on my back and guiding me toward the house. "It will be better if we plan it together."

My stomach dropped, but I went along with him, feeling as if I had no choice, and as if I was under the power of someone much older than me: not just in years but eons, some mythical creature with a handsome human face.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Huge thanks to those who've reviewed and followed! Things go a bit off the rails in this instalment, and way off the rails in the next one, but there are still Gatsby-informed details to come.

* * *

I wasn't much of a party planner, but I gave Kenny input when he asked for it, mostly about music. He had four bands come to the house, set up on the back patio and audition, and ultimately we chose the last one, a twenty-piece orchestra that played mostly traditional big band music and some swing. Kenny wondered if people would want to dress formally for a summer party, and I said that they should, imagining Kyle in a tuxedo. I'd seen him in one once before, during our junior prom, before things changed. Cartman was the only one of us who attended the senior prom.

After two days with no word from him, I called the Cartman residence and asked for Kyle. Again, I was informed that he was out, and again my call was returned not by Kyle but by Cartman. I cursed myself for not asking Kyle for his cell phone number, then wondered if Cartman even allowed him to have one.

"Kyle's in L.A.," Cartman said when I asked why he couldn't come to the phone.

"Los Angeles?"

"No, Latin America. Of course Los Angeles!"

"What's he doing there?"

"Having surgery."

"Surgery?" The whole universe seemed to pulse around me in a single violent hiccup. "What for? Is he alright?"

"It's personal. I'm sure he'd rather I didn't say. And of course he's alright - I've secured the best doctors money can buy. What message did you have for him?"

"I - ah. Kenny's having a party next weekend, he wanted me to invite the two of you. Is anyone with Kyle? While he's having this surgery?" I wanted to ask Cartman why he wasn't there himself, though I could guess. The role of caretaker would quickly bore him.

"His brother is with him," Cartman said. "Don't concern yourself with it. He asked me to lie to you if you called, actually, but I don't go in for that sort of nonsense. Kyle is having surgery, and I won't be saying another word about it. Now what's this about a party?"

I gave him the details: the following Saturday, sundown to sun up, formal attire.

"Will Kyle be well enough to attend?" I asked, still terrified for him.

"Certainly," Cartman said. "But that doesn't mean he'll accept your invitation."

"You mean to answer for him?" I said, furious.

"Oh, Stan. How little you know about us."

"Yes, by your design, it seems."

"Comfort yourself with that delusion," Cartman said, and then he hung up.

I was in a foul mood for the rest of the week, fretting over Kyle and constantly talking myself out of taking a boat across the lake to snoop around and see if he'd returned. I'd given up on using the phone at the Cartman household as a means of communicating with him. Eventually I boiled over and grumbled something about Kyle's mysterious surgery to Kenny. We were having dinner together for the first time that week; he'd frequently been working late, on what I had no idea. He looked up from his tuna steak and stared at me.

"Did you say Los Angeles?"

"Yes. That's where he's gone - I'm not so concerned about the where as the why. Cartman implied that it was something embarrassing, but God knows his word isn't worth much. I'll have to ask Kyle, if we're ever allowed to see him again."

"You don't think he'll come to the party?" Kenny's eyes drifted away from mine, to the window.

"It was implied that he might not. Who knows if Cartman will even relay the invitation? How on earth did this happen?" I asked, feeling as if I could cry from frustrated confusion. "I got no explanation from either of them when I asked. Cartman told me they 'ran into each other' and that was that. Kyle - what's happened to him that he would fall in with that pig?" I didn't dare say 'in love,' because, whatever else was going on, that didn't seem to be the case.

Kenny wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood. He seemed shaky, as if drunk, though I'd only seen him down a few glasses of wine.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I have to-"

And then he walked out of the dining room, leaving me with my mouth hanging open.

On the morning of the party, caterers and stage hands began arriving before I'd left the guesthouse. Having become increasingly wary of Kenny's company - or lack thereof - I'd taken to eating granola and yogurt in my little kitchen rather than submitting to the full service breakfast that I typically consumed alone. I stood at the front of the guesthouse spooning granola-laced yogurt into my mouth and watching the procession of party organizers, tents going up and great trays of food being brought in through the kitchen side door. Around noon, as I was coming out of my shower, there was a knock on my door. I hurried there, thinking of Kyle but not exactly expecting him. It was Kenny's butler at the door, presenting me with a heavy garment bag that was folded over his arm.

"What's this?" I asked, sorry that I had rushed for the door in my boxer shorts.

"A gift from Mr. McCormick, sir."

I unzipped the bag to find a fine-looking suit inside, in a lightweight gray material that was appropriate for the hot weather and still quite formal.

"He's had it made to your specifications," the butler said. "He asks me to tell you that you're free to wear something else, but he hopes you'll like the gift."

"Thanks - tell him thank you, it's great." I wondered how Kenny knew my 'specifications,' but I didn't doubt that he'd learned of them somehow. Indeed, when I tried the suit on, it fit perfectly. It was so expensive-looking and flattering that I blushed when I turned in the mirror and lifted the jacket to see how my ass looked in the pants.

I went over to the house around four o'clock, wearing the new suit and wondering if I could be of some help. Mostly I just got in the way and sipped from a beer, hanging about on the pool deck and in the library. Kenny was nowhere to be found; he'd left his top butler to direct the party staff.

The orchestra arrived an hour later and I watched them set up, feeling wistful about my attempts to play the guitar. I'd been told in high school that I was musically gifted, but I can't say that any of my friends were particularly supportive of my music, even Kyle, though I'd written songs for him multiple times. As we got older, I suppose I made it less clear that they were for him. He was not musical and tended to follow trends slavishly, always only interested in whatever band was big at the moment and being played on Top 40 radio - or too cool to be played there, as we got older, but just as popular in other circles.

It had come to the point that even thinking about Kyle caused a physical pain in my chest, a kind of tired soreness, as if I'd overworked a muscle. I stared across the water, waiting to see a white boat coming toward our dock, bearing Kyle toward me - even if Cartman was at the helm - his curls disordered by the wind. Instead, Kenny appeared and tapped me on my shoulder.

"Suit looks great," he said when I stood. I straightened it, feeling slightly uncomfortable. No one since my mother had bought clothes for me, and it was surely an expensive gift. Kenny was wearing a cream-colored suit with black pinstripes and a dark pink shirt, and was somehow pulling it off.

"Thanks for this," I said, taking hold of the lapels on my jacket. "And for everything. I feel like I should be repaying you for your generosity somehow."

"You are," he said. "With your company. C'mon, let's have a real drink."

The guests started arriving at seven, and I was already feeling drunk, in need of a meal. There was certainly plenty of food on offer, circulating on silver trays: finger sandwiches, shots of cold gazpacho, fruit wrapped in serrano ham and a dozen other options that whizzed by me. There would be a formal dinner at nine o'clock, and another sit-down meal served just after midnight. I was famished, and feeling awkward as guests who I didn't know began to crowd the patio and the grand rooms that spilled out onto it. When I found Craig at the bar I grabbed for his arm. He turned to me and smiled in his guarded way.

"What are you drinking?" I asked.

"A Moscow mule," he said. "You?"

"Nothing - I'm taking a break. I'll need a nap before midnight if I don't."

"There are worse things than napping during a twelve-hour-long party."

"Can I talk to you?" I asked, drawing him away from the bar. "Someplace private?"

"Of course," he said, and I was worried that he thought I was trying to seduce him. The thought had crossed my mind, but I had more pressing concerns. I brought him down toward the lake, to a grove of thin pines that provided some cover from the party, which was already growing noisy with chatter and music.

"How's Kyle?" I asked Craig when we were alone together, before he could swoon in for a kiss; I could see that he was thinking about it. "Have you seen him this week?" I wasn't sure if I should mention the surgery, because perhaps it was Kyle's secret from Craig.

"He's alright," Craig said. "A little under the weather, I think."

"Is he coming tonight, do you know?"

"Doubtful," Craig said. He smiled. "You don't know the whole story about California, do you?"

"No," I said, feeling panicked. "Is he ill? Is it serious? Is he dying-"

"I think we're referring to different stories about California," Craig said. "Never mind, I'll tell you later. I think you're too sober to hear about it now. Rest assured that he's not dying, in the meantime. Let's go back up there and watch people make fools out of themselves on the dance floor."

The party was a feverish blur from then on: food, booze, and shouted conversations. I kept close to Craig, and kept an eye out for any red haired party-goers. The only ones I found were women, and I was surprised to find one of them in the company of my childhood sweetheart, Wendy Testaburger.

"You're in town for the summer?" she said, and she embraced me. I clung to her; I'd always liked her smell.

"I'm staying here, actually," I said. I turned to see that Craig had drifted off and was chatting with some men I didn't know. "At Kenny's house. Well, in the guesthouse."

"Fantastic!" Wendy said. "I'm glad he's still in touch with one of you. I was so surprised to get this invitation, and to realize who it was coming from - where is he, anyway? I haven't seen him yet tonight."

"I haven't been able to find him since people started to arrive. He's sort of - well. He was always odd and quiet, wasn't he?"

"Yes," Wendy said. "How did he make all of his money?" she asked, more quietly, moving close to me.

"Hell if I know," I said. "It's a mystery - I'll investigate over the course of the summer and report back to you."

"Please do! But I'm happy for him, if all this wealth has made him happy."

"I'm not sure it has."

"How about Kyle and Cartman?" she said, and I could see a change in her eyes: caution, though she was a woman who was rarely cautious. "Have you seen them?"

"Yes, once. Well, twice, in Cartman's case. Unhappily."

"Unhappily? What about them, are they happy?"

"I don't think so," I said, and for a moment I considered mentioning Butters, but I wasn't drunk enough to dare it.

"I was invited to their wedding last year," Wendy said, "But I was out of the country at the time and couldn't go. I'm not sure that I would have, anyway. Did you?"

"Of course not."

"Of course not," she said, nodding to herself. She drank from her glass and surveyed the party. "Craig Tucker is staring at you," she said.

"We're having an affair," I said. "Sort of."

"Oh, Stanley," she said, and she rolled her eyes. I felt ashamed of myself, though I wasn't sure why.

I rejoined Craig, and we sat together for the second meal. I wasn't hungry, but was glad to be seated as opposed to circulating. Neither of us had found Kenny yet. At midnight, just before the meal was served, a spectacular firework show exploded overhead, launched from the other side of the lake. People were drunk enough by that point to coo and exclaim like children, deeply impressed by bright lights and loud noises, but I felt melancholy as we all watched the sky, ignoring the trays of food that were being brought to our tables. I was wondering if Kyle was watching this from some balcony across the lake, or if it had woken him from a miserable sleep. I began to feel anxious about getting Craig alone again and finding out what had happened in California. Kenny thwarted my plans to eat quickly and escape to the guesthouse when he joined us at the table, playing host at last.

"Where have you been all night?" I asked, irritated by his smile, and by the fact that this lavish party hadn't featured Kyle's presence, as if that were Kenny's fault and not Cartman's.

"I've been around," he said. "Was the music alright? I can't tell with that sort of thing."

"It was fine," Craig said. "In the sense that I barely noticed it. That's how music should be, at a party."

"The longest day of the year is over," Kenny said. He seemed sad about this. "How about the food?" he asked, looking to me.

"It was all great," I said. "Didn't you eat any yourself?"

"Well, yeah, but I can't tell, really, can I?"

"Why can't you?" Craig asked.

"I'm not cultured," Kenny said, and his smile widened in a genuine way, as if he thought this was hilarious. "I can taste it, you know, but I don't have _taste_."

"That's being harsh," Craig said, and he glanced at me as if Kenny was making him uncomfortable. I began to notice how infrequently Kenny blinked.

"It's alright," Kenny said. "My lack of taste is one of the few things I'm not ashamed of."

"You're ashamed of lots of things?" I asked.

"Aren't you?" Kenny said, and I felt it in my chest, a searing accusation. I'd already been sweating from the heat, and now I was flushing powerfully inside the suit he'd bought for me. The intensity drained from his eyes, and his smile became real again. "I mean, we're all Catholics here, eh?" He elbowed Craig, who grunted.

"Not hardly," Craig said. "Not anymore."

"It's not the sort of thing you can outgrow," Kenny said. "Is it? Maybe it's just me."

"I know what you mean," I said, and I grabbed for some half-melted cocktail that might have been mine.

There was more dancing after the fireworks and the meal, and some of the people who'd overindulged were puking into the outlying shrubbery. I was tired of the whole scene, but Craig had engaged himself in a debate over environmental politics with some ass who worked for - owned? - an oil company, and he kept nudging me to support his positions.

"I thought you were passionate about this stuff?" he said when the man had drifted off.

"I am," I said. "But I'm too drunk to be articulate, and I don't want to misstate my points in this - handicapped state."

"You do sound drunk," Craig said, and he grinned. "Which is good, I think."

"Can we go? You promised to tell me some story about California."

"About Kyle, you mean. Yes, we can go, but we should fuck before the story. If you'd like to be fucked," he said, leaning over to murmur in my ear.

"I would," I said, surprised to realize that it was quite true. I was feeling floppy and loose-limbed, ready for it.

We walked across the lawn to the guesthouse, and I was glad for the shadowy surroundings and the relative quiet as we left the party behind. I'd put no lights on before I left, and it was very dark as I unlocked the door, clouds sliding over the moon.

"Do you think they'll really hold out until sun up?" Craig asked. "Next door?"

"Some people might. It's not for me. Not for anyone who's not fueled by coke, I'd think."

"Come here," Craig said as I tried to head back for the bedroom. He took me by my collar pulled me toward him. He was taller than me by a few inches, which I suddenly found irritating. "I want to fuck you in here," he said. "Over your little kitchen table."

"It's hardly mine."

"You know what I mean. Get some oil for lube. Real oil."

This excited me. I hadn't experienced much rough, desperate fucking at college - most of the boys I'd been with were sensitive and cuddly, eager to be putty in my hands. That was my type, I suppose, but this was interesting, a kind of experiment. I considered, rooting through a cabinet in search of oil, that it had been Kyle's idea. Or so Craig thought, anyway.

"Over the table," he said when I handed him the oil. He seemed drunk, too, slightly out of control, but I didn't care. I had really been expecting Kyle to show his face at that party. I wondered if he'd wanted to and had been stopped, or if he was never told about the invitation. My hands curled into fists as Craig unfastened my fancy new pants and pushed them down. Though part of me was fighting the urge, since I didn't completely trust Craig, I wanted to submit, to feel helpless.

"God, I dreamed about this," Craig murmured as he was preparing me, teasing me open with oil-slick fingertips.

"About - me?" I said, surprised.

"Yes. Dominating you. You were so impressive. I wanted mount your smug ass."

"I was impressive?" I scoffed. I hadn't felt that way in high school.

"Bebe bragged that you were good in bed."

"Well, she was seventeen. She probably wouldn't say the same now - ahh."

He pushed in then, fingers first, making my spine soften. I rested my cheek against the table, spread my legs as far as the pants around my ankles would allow, and gave myself over to the feeling of giving up control. Craig was big; he went in slowly, not unhinged enough to hurt me. We were both panting and overheated by the time he was hovering over me, all in, his hands braced on the table.

"You're sweating through your shirt," he said, and only then did I realize that I'd left the jacket behind at the party.

"So take it off of me," I said. As I'd suspected, he didn't have the patience: he simply pushed it up to my shoulder blades as he started to fuck me, so that he could admire my sweaty skin. The table moved across the room with each thrust, the two of us moving with it until it crashed into the wall. Something about this set Craig off: he grunted and started fucking me harder, until I was shouting from the pain in my ribs. Still, I came in my hand as he pummeled me, shooting onto the kitchen floor. His climax followed mine, and he crashed down onto me before becoming gentle again, nuzzling his face against the searing skin on my neck, where my blush would have been most noticeable if we weren't in the dark.

"Are you alright?" he asked, pulling out. The question always sent a shiver up my spine: that two people could be so connected and not know for sure if it was in pleasure or pain.

"I'm fine," I said, but I winced when I stood. I would have a line of bruises where the table had pressed under my ribs. "Take this shirt off of me," I said, finished with being servile. He did as I asked, and I stepped out of my pooled pants and boxer shorts. "Get some water," I said, gesturing to the fridge.

"I see Kenny spared no expense," Craig said when he found glass bottles of mineral water. I nodded and took one from him.

"I've got to lie down," I said after gulping from the bottle. "I'm exhausted. You'll join me?"

"Of course," Craig said, and he stepped forward to kiss me softly on the lips. "I'll sleep here, if that's alright."

"Good," I said, tired of being alone. As we retired to the bedroom, I was tensely anticipating his news about Kyle, hoping Craig hadn't forgotten, not wanting to bring it up again myself. I put on fresh boxer shorts and Craig shook his head at the pair I offered, slipping naked into my bed. I thought of opening a window to let in the night breeze, but didn't want to overhear any more partying from next door.

"I'm cool enough now," Craig said, drawing me to him after I'd dropped onto the bed. "You can come closer." He neatened my hair, gazing up at me with fondness that surprised me. "Are you alright?" he asked again.

"Of course I am. I said I was."

"But you're still breathing hard - your asthma. Do you need to get your inhaler?"

I laughed. "Would you be flattered if you'd brought on an attack with your cock?"

"No," Craig said, and he frowned.

"I'm alright, I promise." I kissed him and settled down beside him, my arm draped across his skinny chest.

"You're wondering about California," he said. "And now I'm wondering if I should have said anything. I think it was the gin."

"Mhmm, well, either way, now it's out."

"Not quite, but I will tell you. If you really want to know?"

"Of course I do! We're talking about what, though, exactly? Kyle's mysterious illness?"

"He has no illness," Craig said, and he rolled his eyes. "Other than diabetes, anyway. I'm talking about another trip to California entirely. The one he made when he left college."

"What?" I sat up on my elbow, frowning. "What do you mean, he left college?"

"Kyle quit CSU during his freshman year. Settle down." Craig sighed and coaxed me onto the pillow again, stroking my cheek. "He never told you about Cartman's lies? About Kenny, and Los Angeles, and the whole thing?"

"What whole thing?" I asked. My breathing was shallow again, and I began to wonder if I should fetch the inhaler after all.

"Apparently Kyle and Kenny had sex at some point during high school," Craig said. "Or during the summer, I think it was - before senior year, just before Kenny left town. Apparently drugs were involved."

"I see." My heart was hammering; I moved away from Craig so that he wouldn't feel it.

"Kenny's story, when Kyle found him, was that Cartman encouraged him to leave town. Cartman had somehow managed to convince Kenny that Kyle was going to press charges against him for having sex with an intoxicated minor or something like that."

I had to sit up, and I reached for the bottle of water that I'd left on the bedside table. Between the slippery condescension and my shaking hand I could barely grasp it.

"Kyle found out about all this during his freshman year," Craig said. "I suppose Kenny wrote him some long letter of apology for what he thought Kyle had viewed as a - rape, I guess. Kyle was horrified, blamed himself for Kenny's having left school and moved away, and he went on a journey to find him."  
"When was this?" I asked. Kyle had come to see me toward the end of my freshman year, and he'd been so strange, and angry with me when I tried to figure out why.

"I'm not sure, exactly, but I think it was in the spring of his freshman year. He went to California, tracked Kenny down based on some information in the letter, and, well. As I understand it, they had some awful year-long affair while they were living in poverty there together. I don't know how much more I should tell you. Kyle was a bit flaky on the details, you know, he gets embarrassed. I do know they were basically homeless."

"How does Cartman enter into this?" I asked, though by then I could guess.

"He was setting up his company at the time," Craig said. "Starting to make money. And he always had his eye on Kyle, of course. Cartman swept in to rescue him, and Kyle - I guess he was moved by Cartman's devotion, relieved to have regular meals and a safe place to sleep, and to be able to return to school. He'd lost his scholarship, but Cartman paid for the remainder of his education."

"And Kenny?" I said, unable to believe this, though it was just the sort of tragedy that Cartman would design - and that I, in my way, had enabled.

"Kenny was paid to stay away," Craig said. "And Kyle didn't put up much of a fight in that regard. He and Kenny weren't exactly living together in blissful harmony at that point. Kyle all but ran into Cartman's arms."

"But Cartman had lied to Kenny! About Kyle wanting to press charges on him back then - how could Kyle forgive that?"

"Search me, or maybe he really hasn't. I'm sure you can see that he thinks he's using Cartman and getting what he wants in return."

"What he wants! How can you say that? Cartman keeps him locked up in that disgusting mansion, Kyle isn't even allowed to use the phone-"

"What are you talking about?" Craig asked. He was smiling unkindly, and I could see that my hysteria over Kyle had hurt him. "Kyle can use the phone - he has his own cell, he calls me all the time. And he does whatever he pleases. You think that Cartman's locked him up just because he didn't attend this party? Now that you know about his past with Kenny, can't you see the real reason he would never come here?"

"I need-" I said, but I couldn't complete that sentence. I got out of bed and began to pace in front of the window, my hands tucked under my armpits.

"Don't get all worked up," Craig said. "And don't forgive Kenny for being fooled by Cartman's bullshit so easily. I know Kyle didn't, in the end."

"This is insane," I said. I was desperate to speak to Kyle, feeling as if I could swim across the lake in less than a minute, anything to get to him.

"It's insane on Kenny's behalf, and of course on Cartman's, though ultimately it all played out the way he hoped it would. Though actually, I doubt he suspected that Kyle would go after Kenny the way he did. It's so - unlike him, really. I always thought something more than the letter from Kenny must have set him on that course."

"Why wouldn't he have brought Kenny home to his parents, for help?"

"Well, I don't think Kenny wanted to go, for one. He was disgraced - and further so when he allowed Cartman to pay him to take Kyle off his hands, I imagine. I'm sure that's what he means when he talks about being ashamed."

"Among other things," I said, and then I did go for my inhaler, hurrying into the bathroom, where I kept it in my half-unpacked bag of toiletries. I wrapped my lips around it, closed my eyes and took three deep breaths. I felt dizzy, and stared at my dark reflection in the mirror. I'd found the inhaler without needing to put on the light, and I was glad for that. I had no idea what my eyes must look like, and didn't want to see.

Back in the bedroom, Craig was dressing. I stopped him, my hands going to his hips, and pressed my face to his shoulder like a needy child, wanting to be held. I was surprised when he put his arms around me and stroked the back of my neck.

"I'm sorry," I said. "It's a lot to take in. Kyle and I were so close, once. Kenny and Cartman, too, in a way. I can't stand what's become of them."

"At least they're all rich," Craig said, and he smiled at me sadly when I pulled back to look at him.

There was no hope of me sleeping, but Craig was out soon after that, and I was glad for the warmth of him as chills rippled across my skin. I hid my face against Craig's chest and listened to his heartbeat, clinging to its regular rhythm for comfort, as the rest of the world had tumbled over a mountainside, forever shaken for me. I was tempted to believe that Craig was lying, but I knew he wasn't. Lying was what the rest of them had done, all those years, leaving me in the dark. Kyle had said nothing about Kenny's letter or Cartman's scheme when he'd come to visit me, and now I felt sure that he'd already known about all of it. Why was it me who was left out of the opera that the rest of them had ended up staging in California and now here, from opposite sides of the lake we swam in together as children?

At dawn I slept thinly, and I got up with Craig when he rose to dress. He turned down my offer of breakfast and kissed me goodbye at the front door.

"I'll say one more thing about your former friends," he said.

"Fine," I said, because I had one more question for him, and perhaps he was going to answer it.

"Kenny's brought you here for some purpose that has nothing to do with generosity," Craig said. "And you should beware of him. Cartman told me that he's in league with some gangster named Thorn."

"Fair enough," I said, though I wasn't ready to count Kenny as my enemy in all of this. If anything, he'd been the greatest victim. "Now I have one more thing to say about it, or anyway, one more thing to ask. How did you reconnect with Kyle?"

"I needed a kick start after college and got in touch with Cartman," Craig said. "He gave me a business loan and got me meetings with potential clients - big jobs, right away. Do you think it was wrong of me? Have I made a deal with the devil, same as Kenny?"

"Same as Kyle, you mean. No, I don't know. I'm glad you and Kyle have become friends, anyway. That he's able to confide in you."

"Are you? Well, I've now broken his confidence with the one person he made me swear never to tell above all others."

"Me?"

"Yes, Stan. You. I'll see you around."

He left me then, with no assurance that seeing me around was a promise and not just an empty turn of phrase. To be honest, I did not care at the moment. I was already halfway across the lake in my mind, headed toward Kyle.

I didn't call the Cartman household to let them know I was coming, and didn't bother to go to the house in search of Kenny. A whole team of staff was cleaning up, and a few party goers were passed out on lounge chairs by the pool as I made my way down toward the dock. I found a single red high-heeled shoe on the pathway, and scattered ash from the firework display. The sun had risen, and there was no green light to beckon me from across the lake, but I knew well enough which direction I was going. I had only to ask one of the skippers Kenny kept on hand to take me to the Cartman residence, and he invited me to board the smaller speed boat.

On the patio at the Cartman mansion, a pool boy directed me to a door man. In contrast to the post-party chaos on Kenny's pool deck, Cartman's was pristine and spotless, butterflies flitting around potted flower arrangements and sprinklers soothing over the surrounding lawn. The door man took my request to speak to Kyle and disappeared. I fully expected Cartman to emerge and ask what I was doing there, but instead the same door man returned and told me to follow him inside.

I was taken up a back staircase that seemed to be used only by the servants, which made me wonder if I was being sneaked onto the property, and by whom. The door man brought me to a dimly light hallway with brass sconces and striped wallpaper. At the end of the hallway there were two large white doors, and he opened one, stepping in ahead of me.

"Mr. Marsh, sir," and he moved aside so that I could enter the room. It was a large, airy room with an enormous bed in the center, some kind of XXL California king mattress that dwarfed Kyle, who was sitting up against a pile of white pillows, smiling at me. He had bruises on his face.

"Stan," he said. "Come in. Thank you, Martin."

"Of course, sir."

The door man left, and I stood frozen, staring at Kyle, paralyzed by developing rage.

"Don't look at me like that," Kyle said, touching his bruised cheek. "You're making me feel ugly. I know I am, but it's only temporary."

"What the hell happened?" I rushed to the bed, already plotting to murder Cartman for this. "He hit you?"

"He? Oh-!" Kyle laughed. "Of course you'd think that, sorry. No, this is from my surgery. I thought he told you? He bragged to me that he hadn't kept my secret."

"Kyle, what is going on?" I asked, and I fell to a seat on the bed, feeling as if I had swum across the lake after all, completely drained. "Tell me, please. Don't put on an act for me. Not for me, Kyle, not anymore."

"An act?" He frowned and moved closer, crawling out from under the fluffy white comforter to reveal that he was wearing only a pair of black briefs under his little mauve t-shirt.

"You know what I mean," I said, wanting to put my head in his lap and cry.

"Oh, Stan," he said, and he took my hand, bringing it to his chest, which was warm and softer than I'd realized. "You look awful. Are you hungover from that party? I wish I'd gone, but I never could have shown my face. I had plastic surgery," he said, quietly. He watched my face in the aftermath of announcing this, a blush spreading over his bruised cheeks. The bruises were fading, yellowish, and centered around his nose. Only when I noticed this did I realize that it wasn't the same nose he'd had two weeks ago. It wasn't hugely different, but the bump was smoothed down to almost nothing and the tip was narrower. "What do you think?" he said, leaning back to model it for me. "She did a good job, yeah?"

"She?"

"I know! Who's ever heard of a female plastic surgeon? But they exist, apparently, and this one is the best. Look, it's humiliating and vain - I know. I was hoping to avoid everyone until it had healed, but you know me. I take some time to heal."

That was the last straw, for me: anxious vomiting was imminent. Having no time to locate a trashcan or even the doorway to the bathroom, I vaulted myself toward the French doors that were open to a large balcony, stumbled against the stone railing and threw up over the side. Kyle shouted with alarm and ran to me, grabbing me before I could tip over the edge and fall into the garden below.

"Stan!" Kyle said, wheeling me around to face him. "Are you okay? God! I thought you were going over head first!" He suddenly seemed to be on the verge of tears, which made my eyes burn, too. I allowed him to bring me over to an overstuffed chair on the patio, somewhere between a love seat and a mattress. On it, I crumpled into his enfolding arms. He moaned, rocking me.

"Craig told me horrible things," I said. "The whole story."

"What story?" Kyle scoffed. "Craig is dramatic. I suppose he was talking about Kenny and my stupid attempt to save him from himself back then."

"Where's Cartman?" I asked, afraid that he would burst in and find us together, Kyle's naked legs folded against my chest.

"Oh, who cares where he is? With Butters, I presume. I've got my private investigator following him. The blissful refuge of alimony is only a few incriminating photographs away."

"Alimony? You're leaving him?"

"Well, yes, Stan. He's cheating on me."

"And that bothers you? Because you loved him, once?" I couldn't even say so without wincing. Kyle smiled.

"He was very sweet to me during a bad time in my life," he said. "He's the only reason I graduated from college, despite all my attempts to bungle that. But no, I never managed to fall in love with him. It's inconsequential, at this point. He can move Butters in here as Mrs. Eric Cartman the second."

"I don't understand how you can be like this," I said, feeling underwater already in the presence of his calmness, his scent, and his hand on my bicep, squeezing gently. "And Cartman - he lied to Kenny! Craig told me. He drove Kenny out of town."

Kyle's face fell, and he released my arm. "Oh, God, look at me," he mumbled, glancing down at his lap. "In my underwear and everything. Maybe it's appropriate, since you seem to want to interrogate and humiliate me."

"What! No, I-"

"Cartman didn't lie," Kyle said. He stood and walked to the railing. "I didn't really want to press charges, but I shouted it at Cartman once, angrily, just to get him off my back about thinking he could have me again. He relayed this sentiment to Kenny, but Kenny never took it seriously. It was the mere suggestion of - my unhappiness. In the aftermath. That's what drove Kenny out of South Park."

"Kyle," I said, my voice breaking. "I'm so sorry."

"Stop apologizing," he said, sharply. "I was. It's not. You didn't do anything wrong. Even Cartman didn't, really. Stanley, don't cry."

He returned to me and I grabbed for him, too worn down by all of this to have any tact. Kyle cradled my head against his chest and shushed me as I sobbed pathetically, letting loose only a fraction of the guilty despair that I'd lived with since I was seventeen years old.

"Shhh," Kyle said, lifting my face up to his. "We were just kids messing around. I never meant that stupid comment to Cartman to be taken seriously."

"But you went to California, to find Kenny. Craig said you were homeless."

"Craig is an enterprising little shit stirrer," Kyle said, his eyes flashing. "And he wants your cock. Or your ass, if I'm remembering his preferences correctly. He - look, of course, we were two nineteen-year-old kids, we were living in a shitty apartment with four other guys, some of whom may have been doing escort work-"

"Kyle-"

"Don't throw up again, listen. Kenny was selling frozen bananas, I was bussing tables, hating every minute of it - look at my poor hands!" He held them up and I examined them carefully, finger by finger, finding no flaws aside from a scar over one knuckle on his right hand. "It was supposed to be this grand romance, and I guess we had our moments, but in the end we were just two miserable kids sharing a mattress on a floor. A roach crawled across my bare ass once, Stan. You never forget what that feels like. I called Cartman the morning after it happened. He gave Kenny some money - it was really crass, and I do feel bad about how we parted. I know I should see him. Kenny, I mean. I know I should."

I took a moment to absorb that, peering out at Kyle's view of the lake.

"Is this the master bedroom?" I asked, not ready to make any other sort of response to his story yet, or to how wildly it differed in tone from Craig's version.

"No," Kyle said. "The master is downstairs. This is my room."

"You don't sleep together?"

"Not usually, not unless he cries. He's not as interested in sex as you might imagine, but he never tires of squeezing the life out of me in bed like I'm one of his stuffed animals."

"I can't believe you - you and him. And Kenny, too."

"Why should it so hard to believe?" Kyle said, coldly. "You saw it with your own eyes, once."

"But. That was-" I wanted to say: what about me? When do I get my turn to have you all to myself? But even the thought was disgusting, as if it were owed to me. I closed my eyes and allowed Kyle to wipe my cheeks dry with his thumbs.

"You were better off when you were far away from all of this," Kyle said, softly. "I wish he hadn't asked you here. But back then - I was so glad you were there. That day. To look out for me. I can look out for myself now, though."

"I suppose you'll want to see Kenny," I said, devastated by that. I rose from the sofa and went, sniffling, to the railing. "I know he wants to see you." It was clear, at last, why I had been asked to Kenny's house: as his go-between. Kyle's handler.

"It would be difficult," Kyle said. He leaned back onto the pillows, bringing his knees to his chest, his cock soft inside those black briefs and nestled invitingly between his thighs. "I feel like he must hate me."

"I don't think so. Though who can tell? He's very strange."

Kyle said nothing, and appeared to be deep in thought. I sensed that it was time for me to leave, lest any more bodily fluids should spill from me, unbidden.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked. "Any of it?"

Kyle's eyes trailed up to mine, and he looked nervous for a moment, then shrugged it off.

"For the same reason I didn't want you to know I was having my nose done," he said. "I want you to keep thinking I'm better than I really am. Which is ridiculous, of course, considering what you've already seen."

"You've done nothing wrong," I said. "Nose included. I'm disappointed that you married Cartman, but. You were young, and scared, and you needed money."

"Stop forgiving me," Kyle said, his tone so suddenly harsh that I stepped backward. "It's your worst quality."

"I'll go," I said, but he jumped up and caught me before I could pass back into the bedroom. He smiled sheepishly and was, again, forgiven by me in my heart.

"Tell Kenny I'll come next Wednesday," he said, quietly. "Cartman will be in Denver with some investors, and my face should be presentable by then. Tell no one - not even Craig. Especially not Craig."

"Aren't you and Craig friends?"

"Craig is my friend in the same sense that Cartman is my husband. Go on, Stan." He leaned up to press a friendly little kiss to my cheek, melting me. "I can't bear to let you see me like this for a moment longer."

"You don't look bad," I said. The bruises made his creamy skin tone prettier in contrast, and he'd always been beautiful to me when he was worn down and in need of shelter. He grinned and adjusted the waist band of his underwear.

"Thanks," he said. "Can you find your way out?"

"I'll manage."

Riding back across the lake in Kenny's boat, I began to feel like I'd dreamed the conversation with Kyle, though not the one I'd had with Craig. Kyle simply took me to another world, and if he wanted to spin me around in an entirely different orbit than the one Craig had sent me whirling into, he could do so easily. There was only one thing left for me to do, having heard both versions.

I had to hear Kenny's side of the story, now.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** I would like to hear any and all opinions about how this is going, anon or not, because it's kind of an experiment and I'm seriously curious. I am (without meaning to) listening to 'Up the Wolves' as I post this, which is the song I listened to about 100 times in a row while reading Red String, also randomly/without meaning to, so I'm feeling nostalgic about SP fandom, here's to us.

* * *

Asking Kenny about what had happened between him and Kyle when they were nineteen proved to be more difficult than I expected, both because of his work schedule and my lack of nerve. There was something reserved and calm about Kenny that I didn't want to disturb, as if he might take his handsome mask off and reveal a snarling beast or, worse, a wounded child, the kind of heartbroken man who had once run away from home to spare the person he'd hurt from having to see him ever again. Unless Craig's version was true and he left town to evade legal repercussions, but the notion that Kenny's reasons for leaving had been much more complicated than that was the one part of Kyle's story that I took at face value.

I finally managed to get a moment alone with Kenny on Sunday, when I noticed him down by the dock as I was crossing to the main house to find some food for dinner. I hadn't left the estate all week and was beginning to feel stir crazy, constantly plagued by the thought that Kyle was just a short boat trip away, hiding in that fluffy white bedroom while his bruises faded.

"There you are," I called out as I made my way down toward Kenny. He turned, smiling, as if he'd expected me. "I was beginning to wonder if you were lying in a gutter somewhere in the city."

"Sorry," Kenny said. "We're working on a big merger." His lips quirked, his smile becoming more shark-like. "It's a very delicate process. Lots of preparation, and you have to strike at just the right moment. Like proposing marriage."

"I see." I'd only ever thought of proposing marriage once, and there was no preparation in my scheme, no finesse or tact. It had been when Kyle came to visit me at Trinity. But I couldn't seriously ask him or anyone to marry me; I had nothing to my name in terms of a comfortable lifestyle that we could share. Even if I had, I suspect he would have turned me down.

"You alright?" Kenny asked.

"Yes," I said. "Just preoccupied. I went to see Kyle again this week."

"Oh?" Kenny turned back toward the lake. It was early evening, the green light on Cartman's dock glowing dimly in contrast to the glitter of the sunset on the water.

"He'd like to see you," I said. "On Wednesday. He's free to come for lunch or something. Without Cartman. What do you say?"

I studied him, awaiting a strong reaction, but his expression was stoic, probably the same one he wore to business meetings regarding delicate mergers.

"Wednesday?" Kenny said, avoiding my eyes.

"Yes, this Wednesday. Can you get away from work for the afternoon?"

"I think so - yes." Kenny touched his tie, worrying it in a boyish way that made me remember him as a kid, how he had hidden half his face inside the hood of his over-sized parka, which always smelled like oily ground beef and his parents' cigarette smoke.

"We talked about California," I said, sensing that this was the time to mention it, if any. "Kyle and I." I decided to leave Craig out of it. I hadn't heard from him, and wasn't sure if I should call.

"California," Kenny said. He smoothed his tie down and looked at me. "He always said he'd never tell you."

"Well, I don't know why not," I said, my chest heating with pitiful anger. "What did he think I would do, laugh at him?"

Kenny looked away from me, and I wasn't sure what to ask next, all of my questions becoming slippery and indistinct in my head.

"Do you still love him?" was the only one I could articulate. Kenny huffed a little, almost a laugh.

"I wouldn't know," he said. "I'll tell you on Wednesday."

"He's why you left South Park?"

"He's one of four reasons, yes."

I knew the other three reasons were me, Cartman, and himself, but I didn't dare say so.

"Well," I said. "Will it be awkward? I mean, of course it will, but-"

"Come to the city with me tomorrow," he said. "I want you to meet Damien."

And just like that, the subject of Kyle was closed.

Nevertheless, I considered the meeting between Kenny and Kyle to be scheduled, and I called Craig up to get Kyle's cell phone number, so that there was no chance of Cartman intercepting the message.

"What's this about?" Craig asked after he'd given it to me. I wanted to tell him, but Kyle had made me promise not to.

"Just for the sake of having it," I said. "Maybe the three of us could get together soon."

"I don't think so," Craig said, and he hung up.

Thrown by that and feeling guilty, I called Kyle next. I got his voice mail and tried again later, and when his phone went to voice mail for a third time I began to suspect that he was screening my calls.

"Hello," I said when the recording began, some of my hurt over this suspicion creeping into my tone. "I've spoken to Kenny about Wednesday, and he says he can be here during the day to meet you. Come over around noon. I hope - I hope your injuries are healing well." On that idiotic note, I hung up.

The following morning I was awakened by knocking on my door, and I was surprised to find Kenny there, not a butler he'd sent to fetch me.

"Are we still going to the city today?" he asked me.

"Sure," I said, not wanting to but feeling like I had no choice, and as if I had better get away from the lake and its surroundings for a while anyway, to get some perspective. "Just let me get dressed."

I felt tacky, putting on the suit that Kenny had bought for me, but there was really nothing else that would be appropriate. Kenny was dressed for professional dealings in a darker gray suit and pearly white tie that should have looked ridiculous over a black shirt, but didn't.

"When did you become such an expert dresser?" I asked as we walked toward the massive garage that housed Kenny's fifteen automobiles. I'd explored there a few times during the summer already, running my fingers over the cars' polished hoods and gleaming door pulls.

"I have a stylist," Kenny said, and he smiled when I laughed.

"We're driving ourselves?" I said when Kenny opened the passenger side door of a cream yellow Rolls Royce and indicated that I should climb in.

"I thought it would be fun," Kenny said. "And a chance to talk in private."

"Oh - sure."

I was nervous about the idea of an intimate conversation that would last all the way into the city, though I still had questions. I decided to wait and see what he had in mind in terms of talking in private. We drove in silence for a while, Kenny handling the car capably. He was driving over the speed limit, but not as egregiously as Cartman had.

"I'm not an entirely self-made man," Kenny said when the silence had begun to grow uncomfortable, my palms sweating on my thighs.

"No? Well, who is?"

"Cartman," Kenny said. "Though I suspect he's done some dark deeds on his path to success, like I have. Mine were at my own expense, and I'd wager that his were at the expense of someone weaker than him. I'd love to find out what exactly he mortgaged to finance his future. It's the kind of information Kyle should have."

"Kyle wants to leave him," I blurted. "Cartman's been unfaithful."

Kenny adjusted his hands on the wheel, and I saw his jaw shift slightly. He kept his eyes on the road.

"Of course he has," Kenny said. "Cartman only knows how to destroy things, and how to look impressive while he's doing it. That's why he got into construction. It looks like progress, but something purer is being demolished in the meantime. Have you ever investigated the environmental ethics of his company?"

"Yes." Extensively, to my embarrassment, and without direction from any of the environmental groups I had ever been with. "They're airtight. No violations, not even internationally."

"I've found the same, as far as public records go, but I doubt that's the whole story. In my heart - I know he could never do anything cleanly."

"Right," I said. "But I don't have the means to investigate the company thoroughly, not from the inside or anything like that. Maybe you do?"

"Maybe I do," Kenny said, and he grinned at me. "Do you want steak for lunch? Or is that too heavy, in summer?"

"It's fine," I said, though I had no appetite and couldn't imagine sawing into a steak anytime soon.

Kenny had the car valeted at Republic Plaza and we took the elevator all the way to the top. I was prepared to meet someone who was basically Cartman in twenty years time, fat and balding with yellow cigar stains on his fingers, and was taken aback when I saw a young, attractive man sitting at the massive desk in the office that his equally youthful assistant led us into.

"Fetch us some Jolt, please, Kevin," Damien said. He had black hair and dark eyes, and his hand was cool when I shook it. When his assistant returned I barked a nervous laugh at the sight of three glass bottles of Jolt cola, presented to us on a silver tray by Kevin, who was a stone-faced twink with beautiful cheekbones and tousled blond hair.

"I didn't know they still made this," I said when I took a bottle from the tray.

"I have it imported from Mexico," Damien said. "It's illegal here. This country has a lot of stupid laws, but there's really nowhere better to be a corporation. What do you do?"

"Environmental activism," I said, trying to sound like I was proud of this. I was, usually, but something in the air inside Damien's sprawling penthouse of an office seemed to smell of self doubt: not his, but mine, and perhaps Kenny's, too. He seemed less impressive in Damien's presence.

"That's good," Damien said, looking to Kenny. "It's good to have an activist or two in your pocket."

"He's not in my pocket," Kenny said. "We're childhood friends."

"How did you two meet?" I asked. Damien snorted, his eyes darting to Kenny's. He had one hand in the pocket of his black trousers and generally had the air of a smug teenager rather than a ruthless businessman. He couldn't have been much older than us; his pale skin was preternaturally smooth.

"I met Damien in L.A.," Kenny said. He looked suddenly worried about something, ducking my gaze. "Should we go to lunch?"

The steak restaurant Kenny had in mind was in the basement of the building, an old-world sort of place with dark, wood-paneled walls and the guarded murmur of male voices conducting business over red meat. There was a ficus near our table that needed dusting.

"So," Damien said, sharply unfurling a black napkin over his lap. "Shall we go over the report now, or after the meal?"

"Oh, this isn't the guy," Kenny said. He looked at me, then quickly away. "He really is just a childhood friend. We can talk about the deal tomorrow."

"Fine," Damien said. "Childhood, eh? As I recall, Kenny grew up in the mountains somewhere?"

"South Park." I felt strange giving him information about my background, as if he might use it against me.

"It leaves a bigger impression than most people would like to admit," Damian said. "Where we're born, where we grow up. Who's around when it happens."

I glanced at Kenny, afraid that he might have told this man something about who was around when he grew up and how that led him to L.A., but that was absurd. A basket of hot rolls and a plate with softened curls of butter arrived, and Kenny ate the complimentary bread as ravenously as he had when I'd gone out to eat with him as a child.

"Three Cuba Libres," Damien said when the waiter came, without consulting Kenny or I. "You know how I like them."

I wasn't sure what a Cuba Libre was, but upon arrival it tasted like a rum and Coke with Jolt in place of the Coke, garnished with fat slices of sugared lime.

"Interesting cuff links," I said when Damien lifted his drink. They were made from some bumpy, off-white material that looked uncannily familiar.

"Human teeth," Damien said, and he stretched his wrist toward me to display one. "Molars."

"Ah." I glanced at Kenny, but he was staring very intently at the menu.

The other two ordered steak, and though I had no appetite for it I would have felt awkward asking for chicken salad or something lighter, and I ordered a New York strip with fries. Both were slightly undercooked. Damien and I did most of the talking: I mentioned having graduated from Trinity, and he wanted to know all about it for some reason.

"I miss it," I said after I'd answered his prying, somewhat snide questions about the school's historical religious affiliation and my personal faith. "I applied for grad school there, but didn't get any funding. Yale rejected me outright."

"Still," Kenny said, speaking up suddenly. Another basket of bread had come, and he'd been mopping up the blood from his demolished steak with a roll. "It's really impressive. It's a very good school."

"Yes," I said, uncomfortable. I knew Kenny hadn't gone to college, and felt it might be rude to ask if Damien had. He was smiling at me strangely, as if he'd sensed my polite restraint and was amused by it.

"Kyle said you seemed to fit right in there," Kenny continued, taking me wholly off guard.

"He. You talked about his visit?"

"Yes, he came to L.A. straight from there. He said you seemed really happy at school."

"Ah." I reached for my drink, sorry to remember that I'd already finished it.

"Another round," Damien said, shouting this at a passing waiter who was not ours.

I felt jumpy and acutely underground by the end of the meal, having had more to drink and eat than I really wanted, beneath the city, hidden away from it in semi-darkness. Kenny stepped away from the table after the plates were cleared, saying he needed to make a phone call, and I was annoyed to be left alone with Damien, who had been staring at me for some minutes.

"What?" I said. "Have I got something on my face?"

"Kenny called me up last night and said he'd need to stay at the lake on Wednesday. Personal business, he said. You know anything about that?"

"I don't," I said, anxious about the lie, as if I was being tested by this odd person whose sharp canine teeth showed when he smiled. "Why have you got someone's molars for cuff links?" I asked.

Damien straightened his sleeve and raised his lip a bit, regarding me with less amusement now, as if he'd underestimated me prior to that comment.

"Kenny's youth didn't do him much good," he said. "He and I have that in common."

"Well. He had a difficult – family life, yes. But he's still young, really. You seem to be, too."

He laughed as if that was hilarious, and when Kenny returned to the table Damien turned the conversation to some business matter: a meeting that he had postponed until Thursday.

"Since you've got some urgent business on Wednesday," he said. I felt as if I could smell it in the steak-laden air when Kenny began to sweat.

"It couldn't be helped," he said.

On the drive back to the city, both of us were quiet. I wanted to ask Kenny more about how Kyle had described his visit to Trinity and my seeming acclimation there: it was true, I was having the time of my life, feeling free and reinvented after the hell of my senior year in South Park. But I was in agony again as soon as Kyle appeared, the sort of agony that one wants to prolong forever rather than escaping to something less oppressive but also less important.

"Are you annoyed at me?" Kenny asked as we were nearing our exit on the highway.

"What? No." I wasn't, precisely, but I was annoyed in general about the way things had gone. "Are you prepared to see Kyle on Wednesday?" I asked, in lieu of making some judgmental comments about Damien that I had held in so far. "Will it be – painful?"

"Did Kyle ask to see me?"

"In a sense, yes." I had suggested it, hadn't I? Suddenly I couldn't remember.

"He told me not to get myself killed. Those were his last words to me, in L.A. I think he assumed – back then – that was the best I could hope for, just to not die. Well, I. Could we do it at the guesthouse? I think that would be cozier. Neutral territory, or something."

"Kenny, it's your guesthouse. Do whatever you like with it. I can make myself scarce." I said so with deep resentment, hating the thought of them alone together, then and now.

"No, I want you to be there," Kenny said. "Please, would you be?"

"Of course, if you want. But why?"

"Just to support me. Or him. Both of us. You're sure he won't bring Cartman?"

"That I am sure of, yes."

Tuesday was hot and quiet. I mostly stayed in, brooding. In the afternoon I went down to the lake to watch some ducks, and the sight of them depressed me, because their oblivious chatter seemed to underscore the fact that Kyle was not with me, as everything in the vicinity of the lake had begun to do. I wondered if Kyle would reconnect with Kenny at once, if he would run into Kenny's arms at the first sight of him, and began to understand Cartman's malicious machinations to keep Kyle for himself. But Cartman's plans were never altogether effective, and he was lonely for Kyle, too, I knew. At the heart of it, this was all Kyle's doing. Thinking of it this way drowned me in guilt, and I returned to the guesthouse to escape the heat.

At dinnertime, I went into the main house and wasn't surprised to learn that Kenny was working late in the city. I asked for some tomato soup – the cheap kind, from a can – and toast. I could barely even get that down, and went to bed early with a stomachache, as if I would be the one seeing Kyle again for the first time in five years tomorrow.

When I woke, I heard voices in the house and hurried to put a t-shirt on over my boxers, panicked and only half sure of where I was. I was still groggy when I crossed into the living room and found Kenny there, in more casual clothes than I'd seen him wear all summer: a pair of gray slacks and a white button-down, untucked. I wondered if he would add a belt and a jacket as the hour of Kyle's arrival drew closer. He was directing a fragrant delivery of orchids and roses, enough flowers to decorate an extravagant wedding reception.

"What is this?" I asked. Kenny was smiling and pink-cheeked, as if the reunion was already going well.

"Just to spruce it up a little," he said.

I was sure that flowers were not something Kyle would be impressed by, but I had once been sure that Cartman wasn't – and Kenny, for that matter. I dressed in jeans and a beige t-shirt that I had been told, by the last boy I slept with before Craig, made my olive skin look nice in contrast.

"It's supposed to rain," Kenny said when I reemerged. He was pacing near the front windows while three servants busied about the living room, adjusting the placement of the flower arrangements and setting out tea cakes. "And I should have had the lawn done yesterday."

"Done? No, it's fine. It's not overgrown. Kyle won't notice." Or care, I wanted to add, irritated. "Does he know to come here, not to the house?"

"I told my skipper to bring him here. He's gone to fetch Kyle in one of my boats – the servants are better at communicating than the rest of us, sometimes."

"Who isn't?" I mumbled. I had called Kyle twice the day before, and left no messages when his voice mail picked up both times. "Won't they gossip, though?" I said, more quietly. "The servants. About Kyle having come here?"

"If they do, they won't say anything to Cartman," Kenny said, but he didn't look certain about that.

It began to rain, and I fretted about Kyle crossing the lake in the boat, though it was hardly more than a drizzle. Kenny's face grew paler as noon approached, the smile draining away and not returning when I prodded him with polite small talk. The servants had been sent away.

"He's not coming," Kenny said at five past noon. He leapt out of his chair, then sat again.

"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "Kyle was never punctual."

We sat in silence for a while. I thought of having a drink, but all the liquor and even the beer was at Kenny's house; my fridge had come stocked with a bottle of white wine and one of champagne, and I'd already consumed both, plus two bottles of red from the sideboard, and hadn't replaced any of it.

"Should I start the tea?" I asked, and that was when we heard it: soggy footsteps on the lawn, someone moving carefully, avoiding puddles.

Kenny had not put on a jacket or a belt, but as the footsteps drew closer he sprang out of his chair, frantically tucking in the shirt.

"I'll get the door," I said, experiencing a kind of embarrassed rage and sympathy for him all at once. He was always the one of us who'd most easily been led about by Kyle – or by Cartman, or me at times. Kyle and I once had a soul-deep connection that I haven't felt with anyone since, and I can grudgingly admit that Kyle had an insuppressible fire for pursuing arguments with Cartman that was more passionate than I liked. In my memory it seemed like Kyle had scarcely noticed that Kenny was among us more often than not, and that if he took up some concern about Kenny he was only following my lead. These cruel comforts were swirling about in my head as I pulled open the door, relieved to see that Kyle had the shelter of a rain coat with a hood.

"I'm glad we're doing it here!" Kyle said, calling this out over the rain as he came near. "That big house frightens me."

"Shh," I said, though Kenny had probably already heard this. I held the door open to let Kyle inside, and hurried to take his coat. His hair was somewhat smushed beneath it, but in a charming way that made me want to comb my fingers through his curls to revive them. His bruises had healed, but his complexion was a bit ghostly from all his time spent hiding indoors, and I thought he looked thinner than he had that first afternoon, with the exception of his rear, which was as plump and inviting as always. He was wearing those magnificent jeans – or maybe some other pair that flattered him just as well – and a tight cranberry sweater that seemed too warm for the muggy summer heat.

"Well?" he said, whispering now, drawing closer to me. "What's happening, exactly? Am I about to be kidnapped?"

"Kyle." I hated that joke, the merest suggestion that I could be or had ever been willingly complicit in a plot to hurt him. He smiled and touched my chest.

"I like that shirt," he said. "You look well. You always do, but it's worth mentioning."

"Kenny is this way," I said, already overheated. I stopped at the thermostat on the way to the living room and turned the air conditioning down to 60, thinking of Kyle's nipples under that sweater.

Kenny was at the mantle, his elbow resting on it. He was trying to look casual and failing horribly; he responded to the sight of Kyle by knocking a clock off the mantle with his elbow, fumbling to catch it and barely managing to keep it from smashing against the ground, sort of falling over himself in the process. Kyle was frozen, looking scared.

"Ha," Kenny said, rising and holding up the clock. His face was bright red now. "Whoops, sorry."

"It's your clock," I said, perhaps unkindly.

Silence, but just for a moment. Kyle put on a phony smile – it hurt to see him do so, because I realized then that he'd done the same for me at least twice – and went to Kenny with his hands outstretched.

"It's so very good to see you," Kyle said as Kenny took his hands, visibly shaken and looking so sort of hypnotized that I almost laughed. "I always worried, but I see it was in vain. You've done so well."

"Have I?" Kenny released Kyle's hands and moved away, toward the fireplace again. "No, I – thank you. Thank you for coming."

"Of course, yes, of course I came."

Things got quiet again, Kenny by the mantle and Kyle awkward in the middle of the room, me lingering in the doorway, seemingly forgotten.

"I'll do the tea," I said.

"Wait," Kenny said, but I pretended not to hear him, desperate to flee. He followed me into the kitchen.

"This was a mistake," he whispered as the door swung shut behind him. "A terrible mistake."

"How do you know? Calm down, of course you're nervous at first—"

"This isn't nervousness, this is dread, pure dread, he looks at me like I'm a ghost who's come to haunt him—"

"If he felt that way he wouldn't have come!" I said. "Keep your voice down – no, go back in there, don't leave him alone. You're being rude. I'll bring the tea."

Kenny returned to the living room, and I heard muttered conversation, awkward even from a distance. My hands had begun to shake, and I poured the tea very carefully when it was done. The rain was coming down harder outside, washing out the sound of their voices – or maybe they had gone silent.

"Here we are," I said, announcing myself loudly as I reentered with the tray. Kyle looked at me gratefully, like a puppy scooped out of a cardboard box on a street corner. He was rubbing his hands together slowly, still standing. Kenny was seated, but he sprang up to take over when I tried to serve the tea.

"So you'll be here for the whole summer?" Kenny was saying.

"Yes," Kyle said. "Cartman doesn't like traveling, unless he has to for work. He finds almost every culture outside of suburban Colorado extremely trying."

"How about you?" Kenny said, before I could. "Do you like to travel?"

"Eh," Kyle said. "It's a pain more often than not."

"Where have you traveled to?" I asked. There was a disbelieving challenge in my voice, and I saw that Kyle had heard his, his eyes hardening when he turned to me.

"Here and there," he said.

"You went back to school, didn't you?" Kenny asked. He offered Kyle a tray of lemon squares, and Kyle shook his head at it. "After California?"

"Well – yes, I went back to CSU."

"What was your major?"

"Marketing." Kyle rolled his eyes at himself and turned to me again. "Stan, do you remember when you wanted to be a sports broadcaster or whatever?"

"Yeah," I said. That had been my plan: to go to Boston after college and try to get an internship with some minor league team; I didn't even care which sport, though I would have preferred basketball. I called the games for the South Park Cows in high school, when Kyle was on the team. "Seemed a little far fetched by my junior year," I said.

"I guess we all turned out differently than we'd imagined," Kyle said, leaning over to grab a pastel green macaroon. He bit into it and snorted. "What a stupid observation," he said, showing us half-chewed green cookie. "I mean, that's so obvious. Or true of everyone, I guess."

"What did you think you would be?" I asked, and as soon as I said it I knew I had to leave. Kenny was leaning forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, rapt but lost. Kyle turned to me and swallowed the rest of the macaroon down.

"Don't you remember?" he said, and then he just stared at me, waiting for me to answer.

"Well, the last I heard from you, there was some plan to run away to Canada."

"Did I say that?" Kyle wasn't looking at me then, or Kenny, just staring into space, his tea cup half-raised from its saucer. "Oh, yes. When I came to visit you at college. What a horrible time in my life."

"I'm going for a walk," I said, perhaps too loudly, and I hurried for the front door. No one stopped me. Outside, the downpour continued, but I was glad for the sudden shock of cool rain all about me, soaking me through before I'd gotten ten feet from the house. I was headed toward the lake, my head pounding, heart pounding, the whole world pounding around me like a war drum.

It was the memory of that day: the knowing that I was about to relive it, that I had gone away from them to do so in peace. I went down to the edge of the lake. There were no ducks, nothing on the surface of the water but the little crowns of the heavy raindrops. My father had described them that way when I was a child, when the raindrops were fat enough that you could see their individual landings on the payment: little crowns, do you see the little crowns, Stan?

To explain what happened back then, some understanding of what Kyle was like as a child and then a teenager is necessary. He was principled but impatient for recognition, though he never would have admitted it the way that Cartman did. He'd become aware of his awkwardness before most of us had much concern for our looks, and it was difficult to convince him, when he grew into his looks around fifteen, that he was no longer the skinny geek with the big nose and impossible hair. When girls pursued him, he assumed they were making fun of him and was nasty to them in response. Even at sixteen, when he went from nascently attractive to stunningly beautiful (at least in my eyes), he had no romantic partners and attended the junior prom with me, Kenny, and Wendy, the four of us going together as friends. I think that was the night when I properly fell in love with him: he refused to sip from the flask of whiskey I'd sneaked in to the hotel ballroom that hosted the prom, refused to dance with Wendy, and whispered to me about how ridiculous Kenny's bow tie looked. It was his stubborn dismissal of most of our surroundings, all while wearing a tuxedo and insisting that he and I have boutineers pinned to our jackets even though we didn't have dates: I loved his contradictions, his attempt to fit in and have a good time and his ultimate inability to do so. I could relate to that, I think, except that I made less of a pointed effort to do the 'right,' traditional things. Our junior prom night was also the first time Kyle had his hair done so that his curls were wavy and soft as opposed to frizzy. I told him it looked good – probably five or six times, since I was drunk – and he kept the treatments up all summer.

It was our last summer as children. The following year, we would be preparing to leave town for college; our diverging pathways would already be set. I don't think I was especially conscious of this at the time, but I do remember feeling a sort of wistful nostalgia as we roamed about the town in our usual aimless way, as if I was already looking back on it. I was also obsessed with my newly realized love for Kyle, spending a record number of hours masturbating to the thought of him when we weren't together. When we were together, I was in a constant state of pained bliss, my stomach tightening with every accidental touch. Kyle was working as a cashier at Gyro King that summer – presumably to afford his hair treatments – and he always smelled like oregano. I wanted to bury my nose in his hair and fall asleep with his scent all around me. I wanted this just as much as I wanted to undress him, I think.

On the first of July, we all met up at my house to celebrate Cartman's seventeenth birthday. We were doing it there because my mother was away at a nursing conference that weekend. My father had already been gone for years, living in Utah with his new (Mormon) family, and my sister was off at college. We had the house to ourselves, and Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman planned to stay the whole weekend.

"Did you get it?" Cartman asked almost as soon as he was through the door. He was addressing Kenny, who had been silently watching Kyle and I play video games – a typical arrangement.

"Yeah," Kenny said. He seemed annoyed by the question. "Do you have the money?"

"What is it?" I asked as I watched Kenny exchange a ziplock baggie with blue pills in it for a sweaty handful of cash from Cartman.

"My birthday present to myself," Cartman said. He was grinning wickedly, in a way that had never meant anything good. Kyle wasn't even paying attention; he was cursing me for ignoring the game. We were sharing an old bean bag chair that was a bit small for two people, his frantic stabs at the controller jostling us both.

"It's ecstasy," Kenny said.

"Like, the drug?" I said, and Kenny laughed.

"If you guys are nice to me, I'll let you have some," Cartman said, wagging the bag in my face as he passed in front of the TV.

"Out of the way, fat ass!" Kyle said. "We don't want your happy pills."

"Why not?" I asked, turning to him. "I've heard it's pretty awesome." I was enthusiastic about experimenting with things in general; Kenny and I had this in common, whereas Cartman was just a glutton for any sort of pleasure he could get his hands on. Kyle frowned at me.

"Can't it give you spinal damage or something?" he said.

"Not if you drink lots of water," Kenny said. Kyle turned to him.

"You've done it before?"

"Yeah," Kenny said. "Only once – it's not cheap. It's incredible, though. It's like – everything's perfect for a while. Totally perfect."

Kyle gave me a warning look, probably to remind me that Kenny was not the best person to take advice from when it came to recreational drugs, considering his background. I shrugged.

"I think it'd be fun," I said.

It was still early in the afternoon, but patience had never been one of Cartman's virtues. After consuming two ice cream bars in my kitchen, he insisted that anyone 'man enough' to try the drug should follow him up to my bedroom. I was bored with the video game and curious about what Kyle would be like if he allowed himself to get even a little out of control. The closest we'd come to getting high together was a Nyquil binge when we were nine years old, and I remembered virtually nothing about that, except for the vague sense that Kyle had sung at one point. I thought that if I at least got to see Kyle sing again, the whole endeavor would be worth whatever risks were involved.

Kenny was the one who brought up the water bottles: ten of them from the supply my mother and I kept in the laundry room. The pills were a chalky blue with little dolphin shapes engraved on one side: like candy, I thought. Kyle made a face as he watched me and Kenny take one from Cartman's fat palm.

"C'mon dude," I said.

"Someone should stay sober in case something happens," Kyle said. He was beginning to blush.

"It won't be fun without you," I said, speaking for myself. I'd spent the whole summer having masturbatory visions of what Kyle might look like when he was feeling good, and this would make him feel so good. It was that simple to me, on a conceptual level.

Kyle reached out and took one. I was thrilled, but already a little seed of guilt had sprouted low in my stomach: what if something bad happened to him, and it was me who'd talked him into it?

"Drink half the bottle when you swallow it," Kenny said, passing out water. Even Cartman deferred to him as an authority on this: we all did as he'd said.

"Now," Cartman said. "It takes a while, right?"

"Right," Kenny said. "Half an hour or so."

"Cool," Cartman said, and he went to my computer to put on music. He chose a 'yoga' channel on some free streaming radio station, and he snapped at us when we laughed, saying he'd read that this cheesy new age music sounded 'fucking bad ass' while you were on ecstasy.

Not sure what to do with myself, I went over to my bed and turned on the little TV that sat across from it, on my dresser. It only got basic cable, but there was a summer Olympics that year, and they were showing a men's swimming competition. I stretched out, making myself comfortable, and was glad when Kyle joined me on the bed. He sat near my pillow, one leg hanging over the edge of the mattress, then lay down beside me after a few minutes, touching his lips in a way that he sometimes did when he was nervous, pinching the bottom one between his thumb and forefinger. He was staring at the TV, but I could tell that he wasn't really paying attention to it. Like me, he was just waiting to see what would happen inside his own mind, how things might slowly begin to feel different. Cartman was still fooling around on the computer, and Kenny was sitting on the floor in front of my bookshelf, paging through our junior yearbook. I wondered if he'd bought one that year; if he had, he hadn't asked me to sign it.

I began to feel strange after the second commercial break, as if I'd drifted off to sleep, though my eyes were still open and I could hear the announcer talking about a Russian swimmer being in fourth place overall. There was something humid on my shoulder, and it was nice, making me think of the steam room at the community pool in winter, and the relief of reaching it after leaving the heated pool. Kyle's cheek was resting against my shoulder: the humidity was his breath. I could feel it through the sleeve of my t-shirt.

"This is crazy," Kyle said. His voice was clear and bright, and my heart clenched, because I loved the way he spoke.

"What's crazy?" I asked. I scooted down so that my face was partly in his hair.

"This whole concept, the Olympics. Like, with everything that goes on between these countries, or has gone on, you know, in history, and then we act like this matters to anyone but these people who've relentlessly been conditioned to do this shit since they were four years old. It's not – they don't represent us, really. The athletes – they don't represent the people who are watching, the actual countries – their countrymen. They've had a different cultural experience. You know, they share a culture with, like, these other athletes who do the same sport, if anything. But they're symbols, for us. And that's sort of amazing. How we've all reduced these people to our symbols and they – they win medals for it and feel great about it. We've elevated them and reduced them, and it's the same thing. That's amazing."

I thought this was a brilliant observation, worth writing essays about. I remember moaning, smiling, laughing, and rubbing my face in Kyle's hair, which smelled so good that I began to get an erection.

"They go through like five thousand condoms," Kenny said. "At the Olympic village. They all have sex with each other."

"Guys, I think I'm feeling it," Cartman said, and I was glad that he was feeling it, glad that he was running his fingers over the keyboard on my computer, clumsily and then with care, pressing individual keys. "Heh," he said, grinning – it had never occurred to me that Cartman's smile could be so endearing, childlike and sweet. "This is awesome," he said, and he seemed to be talking about the keyboard specifically.

"You're high," Kyle said, and he laughed, rolling against me to clutch at my shirt. "Hi, Stan," he said when he tipped his face up to mine, beaming.

"Hi, Kyle."

We both cracked up and kind of squirmed against each other, legs tangling together. Everything in the world evaporated except my complete and secure knowledge that I was happy, and that it was real, because Kyle was there. We started rubbing our faces together, and I felt like I would die from joy, breathing hard, both of us moaning from the sensation. Kenny came over and made us both drink more water. He was grinning, looking down at us like we were perfect just like this, flopped together and laughing like idiots, and I believed that we were. Kenny pet Kyle's hair, then my face, and I pressed into his touch, smelling traces of motor oil and lava soap on his hand. He was working at a garage that summer, cleaning up after the mechanics.

"You guys," Kenny said, looking angelically beautiful and just as benevolent, touching our faces while we arched up toward him like kittens. "You guys, Jesus."

"No, really," Cartman said, from my bedroom floor, where he'd spread out, face down, doing a kind of reverse snow angel move. "Seriously, I think I'm feeling it." He licked the carpet and we all laughed.

Kyle and I continued our discussion about the strange phenomenon of the Olympics while Kenny played with our hair, making us both shiver and sigh when his fingernails traveled over our scalps. At some point Cartman appeared at the end of the bed and started rubbing Kyle's socked feet, and Kyle began to lose the train of our conversation, convulsing with pleasure against my side, his hand pushing up under my shirt. He moaned so powerfully that I felt godlike just for having skin that he could touch.

"Heh," Cartman said. "You guys are hard."

"You are, too," Kenny said. He rubbed shyly at his own erection; I found this adorable, fantastic, so _Kenny-like_, sort of humble and wonderful. "I didn't get hard last time," he said.

"Probably 'cause we weren't there," Kyle said, and we all murmured happily in agreement. I felt I was having an epiphany that would remain solid even after the drug had left my system: that I loved Kyle within the gaze of these two, partially even because of that gaze, and that they should therefore be present to witness how much I loved him, always.

I tried to articulate this, I think. Ecstasy doesn't erase memory like alcohol, but the over-stimulation makes recalling every detail difficult. Mostly I remember that, whatever I was saying, we were all agreeing about it, nodding and clawing each other closer, and that Kyle was somehow the center of this, which seemed so fitting, really perfect, because he had been the center of my world for as long as I could remember, even before I'd wanted to touch him this way. Kyle was sighing my name, curling around me, nodding and peeling off his clothes to give me – and them – better access.

"Back rubs are supposed to feel good," Cartman said. It was the kind of comment that would have sent up a thousand red flags in my normally prejudiced view of him, but in the moment I found it very kind of him to suggest, and was happy when Kyle rolled onto his stomach, wearing only his briefs now.

Kyle was clearly going to be the focus of this experience for all three of us, and that thrilled me, because he was for once enjoying our disproportionate attention to him, drooling profusely onto my sheets while Kenny rubbed his neck and shoulders, I dragged my short fingernails over the skin on his back, and Cartman kneaded the muscles just over his tail bone. It didn't take long for me and Cartman to turn our attentions to his twitching ass: I tickled the cleft, Cartman squeezed the cheeks. Kyle went crazy for it and pushed his ass back against our hands, murmuring encouragement. After some wonderfully heady minutes of this, Kenny coaxed Kyle up to drink more water. We all watched his throat bob as he swallowed, enraptured.

"Stan," Kyle said when he took the bottle from his lips, breathing my name out desperately. I nodded, needing no further direction: I surged forward to kiss his panting mouth, moaning into him when the other two rubbed my back as if in approval. Kyle tugged on my hair and laughed giddily against my mouth. I spent some time blathering praise about his eye color, his skin tone, and his hair.

"It's all perfect," I concluded.

"No, no," Cartman said. "The thing about Kyle is that he isn't. But you still want him. Isn't that the thing, Kenny?"

"I don't know, man," Kenny mumbled. He had his face pressed to Kyle's neck and was licking him, moaning between every flick of his tongue.

It would be impossible to describe, in hindsight, how innocent we all believed this to be. It seemed such an effortless extension of the various tensions between us as children and then teenagers, all culminating in this: Kyle's body was our shared symbol. The new age music wafting from my computer seemed like a confirmation of our enhanced awareness of reality, a soundtrack made for us, as specific as a show tune that we were singing together, choreographed to court Kyle's pleasure. Still, I felt protective of him, and when he slid out of his briefs I hurried to undress so that he wouldn't be alone in his nakedness. Cartman and Kenny followed my lead, for their own reasons.

"I'm the only virgin," Kyle said as our hands traveled over him. He was cradled between Kenny and I, and Cartman was between his legs - I do remember being slightly concerned about this, even in the midst of my reverie. "It's so embarrassing," Kyle said, referring to his virginity. The rest of us had slept with girls, or so I assumed at the time. Later, of course, I would learn that Cartman's go-to booty call was actually Butters in drag.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "Sex isn't that great." Wendy was my friend-with-benefits and our couplings were increasingly hollow. Kenny and Cartman both howled with laughter at my assessment.

"You are having the wrong kind of sex, my friend," Cartman said.

"I want to have sex," Kyle said, quietly, though loud enough to get the attention of all three of us. He turned his face against mine and moaned at that cheek-rub feeling that made us both shiver from our shoulders to our toes. "With Stan," he said, dreamily. "Stan should be first."

When he said 'first' I assumed he meant first ever, and not the first to take his turn that afternoon. I think my eyes watered: I nodded and crawled on top of him, which made him laugh, and he brought his hands up to cup my cheeks.

"Stan," he said. "You make me hard on the bean bag chair."

"I do?" We were rubbing our dicks together in a leisurely way, something that suddenly felt completely natural. I felt as if I was already in the midst of an enduring orgasm, as opposed to approaching an actual ejaculation.

"Yeah," Kyle said. For a moment, it was just the two of us in a world of our own. I remember thinking that Kyle's eyes and my eyes were actually emitting some sort of eye-energy, and that I could feel this energy being exchanged in the space between our faces, green and blue mixing into an ocean-like substance that emitted a warm, low-pitched hum of contentment. I think I tried to describe the phenomenon, possibly at length. Someone pressed a bottle of lotion into my hand.

I had control of myself enough to be gentle with him, watching fresh amazement pool into his eyes at every little quirk of my fingers inside him. I'd feverishly researched gay sex online since the morning after our junior prom, and I felt as though the drug had allowed me to reach my highest potential, because Kyle was writhing happily and I was throbbing all over with pleasure, not even inside him yet but already feeling completely connected. Kenny and Cartman hovered, absently caressing us, and I was glad they were there: I think my feeling was that they were protecting us somehow. From what, I don't know, since everything in the world had begun to seem enchanted and good as soon as the drug properly entered my bloodstream. I slid inside Kyle and we kissed for a long time, reveling in the feeling. I think Cartman was the one who started to move my hips for me, to remind me that we were supposed to fucking, not just intimately co-existing.

What followed felt as loving and innocent as my sex with Kyle, maybe because we were all caressing and kissing throughout, absorbed in the feelings that the drug made profound. I will never know, at least in any explainable terms, why Kyle was the only one who took us by turns in his mouth and his ass, but at the time it felt like some sort of celebration of his brand new sex life, and Kyle was the one who pulled us all onto him, into him, who whispered to us that we felt good and seemed to mean it so sincerely that I felt like I would burn down to ash when he looked me straight on, because he was phoenix-like while we took him, glorious.

I began to feel clumsy and tired after I'd been inside him three times, and I could see that he was fading, too, though still smiling against Kenny's kisses. When Cartman went for him a third time - or fourth? - I pushed him away, and only then did I realize that the effects of the drug were fading, the reek of bodily fluids beginning to seem seedy rather than exquisitely beautiful, perfect and all of that. My effusive adjectives were deserting me.

"Leave him," I said, pushing Cartman away from Kyle a second time. We'd ended up on the floor, and Kyle was slumped onto his side, eyes closed, smiling faintly. "He's worn out, just stop."

"That's no fair!" Cartman said, and he was Cartman again, not some harmless boy with a sweet smile. "You went four times, I only got three!"

"You're - no, you're counting wrong, and anyway, it doesn't matter." I think the sick feeling at the pit of my stomach started then, though I was still riding high enough on the down-slide that I didn't bother to acknowledge it. "He's had enough, look. He's practically asleep."

There was a moment when I thought, distantly, that Cartman might try to fight me, that he would ball me up between his big hands and throw me into the corner so he could do whatever he wanted. I was feeling increasingly tired - Kenny had warned us that extreme fatigue would follow the high - but Cartman must have been, too, because he gave up rather easily, crawling toward his clothes.

"Fine," he said. "That's fine. I got another piece of ass five minutes away from here. I'll just finish up over there."

"Don't be like that, Cartman," Kenny said, and I think he was protesting on behalf of the experience the four of us had just shared, which had seemed so pure and holy at the peak of our high. Cartman dressed and left, grumbling about how I was a sanctimonious hypocrite. Kyle was fully asleep by that point, and I ignored Cartman's unpleasant exit. I leaned over Kyle to press kisses behind his ear, and only then did I realize how sticky he was, all over - our slime was even in his hair. "Jesus," Kenny said, probably noticing this, too. He was suddenly keeping his distance, and he looked alarmed when our eyes met.

"He's fine," I said, not anywhere near sure of this. The bliss was fading too fast; I remember feeling jarred, as if I'd woken up in an alley after a binge, though I remembered everything. Kenny brought water.

"I have to go," he said after we'd both drunk some and had woken Kyle enough to get him to swallow a few gulps before he passed out in my arms. "I have a shift."

"Seriously?" It was Friday, when the garage typically closed early, and he'd mentioned nothing about needing to leave the party to take a shift. "Okay," I said when he stood, not about to argue for him to stay. I was still feeling a kind of baseline goodness, but it was accompanied by a new anxiety, and I was eager to take care of Kyle, alone, on my own terms, and make sure he was okay. "See you later?" I said as Kenny dressed.

"Yeah," he said.

Actually, that was the last time I saw him before I was received in the foyer of his mansion six years later.

I got Kyle up into the bed, noticing the ache in my muscles as I did, particularly at the joints in my hips. Cleaning him seemed to be the first priority, so I went to the bathroom for hand towels and wet them with warm water. I had to make several return trips to re-wet them before he was anywhere near clean, and he was still a bit sticky; we'd bathe together later, I decided. Kyle was moaning softly throughout this process, and he smiled at me occasionally, like he was waiting for me to get the joke.

"Are you okay?" I asked him, probably a hundred times.

"Stan," was all he said in response, softly, and I was desperate to interpret this as a positive answer: he was glad that I was with him and not the others.

We both drank more water, Kyle moaning with annoyance when I prompted him to do so. Outside, rain clouds were gathering, and I was shocked to notice that it was after five o'clock. We had begun shortly before two. I had trouble believing that more than three hours had passed, especially because I could scarcely remember a moment when Kyle hadn't one of us in him. Newly shaken, I pulled him into my arms and arranged the blankets over us, though we were both sweaty. Kyle was out cold but breathing evenly, his face resting against my chest. Thunder rumbled distantly outside. I held him tighter, kept awake by the pounding of my heart, until finally exhaustion took over and I dropped to sleep.

When I woke it was to the sound of thunder overhead, and I blinked groggily at the window. It was raining hard, and the room was dark. Kyle was still asleep, but he woke easily when I prodded him to drink more water. The last of my drug-induced euphoria had left me, and I felt empty, fuzzy-headed, and low. I was sure he was feeling this, too, and I drew him back down to the pillows after we'd drained the last water bottle.

"Are you okay?" I asked, afraid to hear the answer now. Kyle grunted.

"My ass," he said.

"It's. You're sore?"

"Yeah," he said. He curled closer to me when I caressed him, which I took as some sort of good sign.

"I'll get you some Advil," I said, and he snorted, pulling me back when I moved to leave the bed.

"Not smart, dude. My liver's seen enough action for one day."

"Oh, right, shit. Sorry."

"Nnh. Do you have, like. Cream? Or something?"

I had the lotion we'd used when we fucked him, but I didn't want to try to soothe him with more of that; it seemed sick. I went in search of something better and found a gummy old jar of Vaseline in the bathroom attached to my mother's room. I presented it, and Kyle nodded. To my surprise, he rolled onto his stomach as if he expected me to apply it.

No longer bold, I was afraid to even turn on the lamp beside the bed, but I did. I eased the blankets down and winced when I saw bruises on Kyle's hips - not deep or dark, but definitely present, finger-sized. We had all fucked him hard at his request at some point, and it was possible that I had contributed to the bruises. I had certainly contributed to the damage below; he wasn't torn or bleeding - miraculously, I think - but he was raw, and he hissed with pain when I cleaned him more intimately than I had before, for the purpose of applying Vaseline. Worse than the redness was our residue inside him, mostly dried up but not entirely. Kyle shifted about shyly, letting me clean him, keeping his head down. I expected to start crying at any moment, but I think I was too stunned, or maybe just too drained of emotions entirely.

"Does that help at all?" I asked. "I could get - I could go to the store and get something with aloe."

"Don't go anywhere," Kyle said. His voice was small again, his face hidden in the pillow. "Unless you have some juice downstairs."

"We do! Pineapple orange."

"Fine - yeah. Just don't go any further than that. And come back fast."

I ran down the stairs naked, knocked over an end table as I bolted through the living room, then dashed upstairs with the juice, forgetting a glass. It felt as if I was racing what had already happened, trying to lap the events of the afternoon and beat them back to Kyle, so that I could undo them.

He drank juice from the carton and asked me to turn off the light. I wasn't sure if he wanted to talk about it, or if trying to apologize or marvel at what had happened earlier would just be embarrassing for him. We lay there in the dark, listening to the storm, and I picked crusty come out of his curls.

"Want to shower?" I asked.

"No," he said, and he moaned. "Hot water, soap. It would hurt like shit."

"Oh. Kyle-"

"Where did they go?"

"Um, Cartman left to go to some - friend's house, and Kenny had to work."

"Good."

I thought of trying to kiss him, but was too scared. I felt betrayed by my body in its previous state, as if I had been possessed. I assumed that Kyle was experiencing this tenfold.

"Want to eat something?" I asked.

"No." He snaked his arm around my waist and sighed, his lips resting against the hollow of my throat. I buried my face in his hair, which now smelled less like oregano and more like our come. I wanted to offer him something, everything, but his fingers were sort of playing up and down my spine, tickling me tiredly, and I was seventeen, stupid, and content to assume this meant he was recovering with quiet dignity, that I shouldn't interrupt to confront him with commentary. I think I must have had enough phony euphoria still in my system to pad my descent from the mania of the afternoon, because I remember thinking, _tomorrow we'll talk, and he'll become my boyfriend for real, and I'll thrash the other two if they ever bring this up_.

I slept through the night, and I woke to find that Kyle had gone and left no note. I waited until nine o'clock in the morning before jogging over to his house. I still hadn't showered, and I was afraid Sheila would smell my sin on me when she opened the door. I think she must have had some idea about the nature of what had happened, probably because of the faint bruising at the corners of Kyle's lips and the guilty look on my face. She told me that Kyle was feeling ill and he would call me when he was better, and closed the door in my face.

He didn't call on Saturday, and I tried his cell on Sunday but got no answer. When I called again on Monday he told me he was in New York visiting his aunt and uncle. He sounded perfectly chipper, if too distracted by the city noises I could hear in the background to pay much attention to my call, and he neglected to inform me that his previously unmentioned trip to New York would last for the rest of the summer. The next time I saw him was at senior picture day at school, three days before classes started.

"There you are," Kyle said as I came toward him, as if I had been the one who went away. He looked good, though different, in a way I couldn't place. His clothes were much more stylish than anything I'd seen him wear before: expensive-looking jeans and a clinging, color-blocked t-shirt that flattered him.

"I missed you," I said, and he laughed, maybe because I sounded run over, punched, and rained upon.

"Me too," he said. Something about the way he said so made me unsure about which of us he had missed: me, or himself.

Later that day we had learned from Cartman that Kenny had left town and wouldn't be returning to school. I couldn't recall any strong reaction from Kyle, just a general sort of disappointed annoyance. I don't precisely remember what I felt then: relief, I think, guiltily. I'd spent some time wishing that Cartman would go away forever, too.

I sat there by the lake going over all of this, as I had so many times before, and even with the additional details I came to the same depressingly basic conclusion: ecstasy was a drug that lowered inhibitions while increasing a sense of emotional connection and the pleasure of physical stimulation. We'd gotten high, gotten out of control in a way that felt then like something transcendent, and when we woke from our happy dream we were all mortified in our own separate ways. I suspected that even Cartman had harbored some guilt, eventually. He had gone out of his way to 'rescue' Kyle from his ordeal in California, after all.

When the rain began to feel as if it had soaked all the way into my bones I headed back toward the guesthouse, though I didn't want to be there. I was sickly curious, for all my hesitation, about what might being on inside my temporary home. It had become clear to me that I was the least interesting player in this drama, someone who did the cleaning up afterward and some of the bridge work in terms of getting Kyle from here to there, but that was all.

I walked into the living room without speaking, probably looking like death. Kyle was there, his face puffy as if he'd been crying. Kenny, meanwhile, looked radiant, and he rushed me as if we were having another reunion.

"I was telling Kyle that we should go have a look at the house," he said. "The main house. Will you come?"

"Yes, come," Kyle said, his voice wavering. Something about him had changed again, and I frowned when I realized what it was. Kyle looked down at his shirt – my shirt – and pulled on the hem. "I'm sorry," he said. "My sweater was – do you mind?" It was a metallic gray t-shirt that was slightly too big on him, one of my favorites, because it made my eyes look harder than they were, when that was necessary.

"It's fine," I said. "And – as you can see—" (though I doubted either of them had noticed) "—I need to change clothes myself. Forgive me for not joining you."

They left, and I went to the guesthouse's front windows to watch them cross the lawn. Kenny reached over to clasp Kyle's hand, and Kyle held on, stumbling closer to him. Lightning flashed like an electric gate that was warning me to move backward if I knew what was good for me, because someone had paid good money to keep me out of the place I was looking into.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Thank you so much to those who've left reviews, given me Tumblr notes or otherwise talked about this story with me - I'm very grateful to have your feedback! Here's the second to last chapter.

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The rain continued for a few long days, and I mostly kept to myself in the guesthouse, researching Cartman Construction on my laptop and failing to find anything about Kenny online. It was as if he had earned his money in some alternate universe, or perhaps by means that he wouldn't want publicly discussed. When I finally dragged myself over to the main house during a break in the rain on Saturday, I was surprised to find him having dinner in the dining room and wearing casual clothes - jeans, even.

"Hey, join me!" he said, and I took a seat near his, which was at the head of the long table. "Are you feeling better?" he asked. My excuse for sulking in private was that I'd gotten a cold from the walking I'd done in the rain.

"Mostly," I said, though in truth I still felt wretched, angry, and ashamed of myself, as if it had all happened yesterday and not six years ago. "Have you been in touch with Kyle since Wednesday?"

"Yes," Kenny said, and he smiled. "In fact, he's invited us both to lunch at the house tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will improve. The forecast says-"

"At Cartman's house?" I said, confused. "I presume he won't be joining us?"

"I think he will," Kenny said. His smile faded somewhat, and he stirred his bisque, a bowl of which had been set in front of me as well by then.

"That sounds horrible," I said, picturing the four of us reunited at last, Cartman blathering and Kyle giving Kenny coy looks, me scowling openly.

"So you won't come?" Kenny said. He actually looked disappointed.

"Of course I'll come. What else have I got to do?"

I went to bed early that night and slept poorly, feeling overheated and then waking to a freezing chill after I'd turned the air conditioning down. I had dreams, too, about Kyle and the lake, a green hat he'd worn when we were kids, and nightmares that felt like memories of those I'd had as a child. In them, Cartman was killing Kyle, laughing and blood-soaked, both of them out of my reach. We were still children in these dreams, and Kenny was lurking on the periphery, looking sad and translucent, like a ghost.

The next day was terribly muggy, the sky completely clear of clouds and the sun relentless at noon, which was when I crossed the still-soggy lawn to meet Kenny. I was feeling nervous but also craving some sort of confrontation. I'd dressed for a semi formal lunch, in a blazer and brown slacks over a nice enough t-shirt. Kenny was decked out in a three piece suit, light gray, with a pressed coral handkerchief emerging from his jacket pocket. I didn't care about being underdressed; it seemed fitting.

"Going to be hot today," Kenny said as we walked down to the dock. He was sweating already, but he had a lively look in his eyes, more animation there than I'd seen all summer, with the exception of the day that Kyle came to the guesthouse. I had the feeling that he thought he was on his way to a fight that he would certainly win. Bugs that had been silenced for days by the rain were singing in the reeds as we made our way onto to the boat, and they seemed to be shrieking and then rattling low, like a warning from a snake that was about to strike.

The breeze that blasted us as the speed boat cut across the lake was a relief, and I closed my eyes against it for a few moments. Kenny didn't seem to want conversation, anyway; he was sitting at the front of the boat and staring ahead in the direction of Cartman and Kyle's house, impatient as a dog waiting at the door when he hears his owner approaching. His hands were clasped over the bow: he looked like he was praying. I wasn't sure if Kyle had been to see him again since that day, and didn't want to ask.

We were met by a butler who took us up to the house, and again I was struck by the sense that Cartman's grounds were somehow more pristine than Kenny's, though not in an appealing way: there was something plastic and unnatural about the brightness of the grass and the structure of the shrubbery. When we passed into the house I was glad for the air conditioning and still tempted to take off my blazer, though I was afraid my t-shirt would have sweat stains. It was the kind of thing I once couldn't have imagined fearing: that Kyle, Cartman and Kenny might see evidence that I was sweating. I could remember many days as children when we all had damp, v-shaped stains on the backs of our t-shirts after a productive day spent trying to catch lizards, making little outdoor villages with our toys, or whatever else we used to do.

The butler brought us into a shady sitting room that I hadn't seen during my last visit, and I was surprised to see Craig reclining on a large divan beside Kyle. They both looked half asleep, and I was relieved when Kyle didn't spring up to embrace Kenny in greeting.

"We can't move," Kyle said. "It's too hot, sorry. There's some cucumber and vodka thing over there if you're thirsty." He gestured to a nearby buffet with a glass pitcher and several tumblers on it, slices of cucumber floating in a deceptively water-like concoction. I glanced at Craig, and he gave me a lazy smile. There was something smug and teasing in it, as if he was asking me if I was surprised to see that he was still in Kyle's inner circle.

"Where's Cartman?" I asked, though I could hear his voice from another room. He sounded as if he was having the last words in some argument.

"He's on the phone," Craig said.

"With Butters, probably," Kyle said. "Who seems to have nothing to do with himself all day but call here. The phone is always ringing, and it's never for me."

"I've called you here," I said, stupidly. "Tried to, anyway." Kyle smiled at me in an unfriendly way, as if I'd recently done something to offend him.

"Yes, you've very fond of the phone yourself," he said, whatever that meant. I went for the pitcher, but winced and refrained from pouring any for myself after I'd taken a whiff to gauge the strength of the drink.

"Well, if you can't afford it after all, that's none of my concern," Cartman was saying, his voice getting louder. "I can hardly say I'm surprised!"

"Butters must be asking for some expensive present," Kyle said, whispering. Kenny still hadn't spoken; he was staring at Kyle with forlorn expectation, waiting to be acknowledged.

"No, it's about a car," I said. "I think. Clyde was going to buy some car-"

We heard the portable phone slam down into its cradle, and I stopped talking, wondering if I should have even said that. Cartman had never exactly asked me to keep his secrets, though I suspected that his bringing me along on his date with Butters was some sort of test of my loyalties that he expected me to fail. He came into the room looking flustered and angry, and frowned at Kenny in a way that made me wonder if he'd known that he was coming.

"What in the fuck are you wearing?" Cartman asked, speaking to Kenny, who looked down at himself.

"It's Amosu," Kenny said.

"It sure is," Cartman muttered, and he went for the pitcher. "Nice pocket square, very metrosexual."

"Shut up, Eric," Kyle said, sounding bored. "Kenny, you look fantastic. You look like a real grown up." I took this personally, as if he was commenting on the collegey look of my blazer. I think the pants I wore that day were from Old Navy or something.

"Here, have a drink," Cartman said, pushing the tumbler he'd filled into Kenny's hand. "You look constipated."

"Stop berating my guests!" Kyle said, sitting up slightly. He looked truly furious, and I remembered my old jealousy of Cartman's ability to enrage him. "For God's sake, Eric, you haven't seen Kenny in six years. Try to say hello before you make further pathetic attempts to belittle him. He's done very well."

"Yes, yes, I've heard," Cartman said, smiling wickedly. He gave Kenny an up-and-down appraisal and turned to get a drink for himself. "Your parents must be very proud."

Kenny's energy seemed to shift from quiet bewilderment to simmering anger then; I could feel the change like a sudden hot wind, but Cartman didn't seem to notice. He clapped Kenny on the shoulder as he passed him, moving toward the divan. I was afraid he would sit beside Kyle and put an arm around him, but he perched on the wooden arm of the divan, which creaked under his weight.

"Stan, have you been keeping busy?" Craig asked, helpfully. I was grateful, because Kenny and Cartman had been staring at each other in a way that sucked the air from the room.

"I guess so," I said. "I've been swimming almost every day."

"In the lake?" Kyle asked, sweetly, as if he hoped this was the case.

"No, in Kenny's pool." I felt badly for disappointing him. He sunk back onto the divan again, eying Cartman like he wanted to push him onto the floor.

"I've been positively sloth-like myself," Craig said. "I miss San Francisco. You should all come see me there sometime. I'm much more impressive in my element."

"You'll never get me to San Francisco," Cartman said, scoffing.

"He knows that, dear," Kyle said. "That's the whole point of inviting the rest of us."

"Kyle," Craig said, laughing uncomfortably while Kyle and Cartman glowered at each other.

"Hot weather really puts the sand in Kyle's you know what," Cartman said, speaking to me, as if I would be able to identify with this observation most. "Which is ironic, considering his people come from the desert."

"Good god, let's go eat," Kyle said, peeling himself off the couch cushion. "At least if he's stuffing his mouth we won't have to suffer his characteristically sophisticated comedy."

"I wasn't trying to be funny," Cartman said, but he consented to this plan, following the rest of us into the dining room.

The mood at lunch was grim and tense, and the meal itself was bizarrely eclectic. I wondered which of them had planned it, since they were both passionate about food in very different ways. We started with a salad featuring ripe strawberries, which was typical enough (though I was surprised to see Cartman willingly eating greens), and then came chick pea patties with a poached egg on top. Eggs seemed to be the theme of the meal, early on, as there was also one on top of the next course, which was grilled asparagus on toast, followed by individual naan bread pizzas featuring sunny-side up eggs. I started to wonder if they were vegetarians, or just trying to get rid of a lot of eggs from some chicken coop I hadn't yet spotted on the property, and was relieved when some meatballs arrived alongside a spicy tomato sauce.

"These are called Rhode Island wiener spice meatballs," Cartman said, and he grinned at each of us as if waiting to hear us laugh at the word wiener.

"My mother's recipe," Kyle said, already chewing one up.

"Do you see Sheila often?" I asked, dying to know what she thought about her son's marriage.

"Oh, yeah," Cartman said. "She's over here all the fucking time."

"Are you serious?" I looked to Kyle, who smiled at me in a private way that briefly elevated me high above the horrid circumstances of the afternoon.

"Cartman has become very good at charming my parents," Kyle said. "Even my mother."

"I pretty much won her over when I converted to Judaism back in the day," Cartman said.

"But that wasn't _serious_," I said, alarmed.

"Sure it was. You should see our wedding pictures. I wore a fucking yarmulke and everything."

I looked at Kyle again, in disbelief, but he was focusing on the meatballs.

"Most of all," Cartman said, "They were grateful as shit to me when I brought Kyle home."

That statement descended over the table like a cold mist, and I longed to see Kenny's expression, but he was sitting beside me and I didn't want to turn to him. Cartman looked very pleased with himself, and Kyle seemed suddenly queasy, his eyes focused on his plate.

"That was so long ago," Kyle said. "I feel so far away from being a teenager. Don't you?" he asked, addressing Kenny.

"Not always," Kenny said. I used this as an excuse to glance at him, and saw that he had fixed his unblinking stare on Kyle, who was returning it with a sort of watery, apologetic look.

"I would never be a teenager again," Craig said, again earning my extreme gratitude for diffusing the tension. "I was so awkward. Do you remember how painfully skinny I was?" he asked me.

"Yes," I said, wanting to touch his thigh under the table.

"I was telling Stan," Craig said, turning back to Cartman and Kyle, who were seated together, across from us, "That I was always jealous of him in high school. He was such a strapping lad. Well, and you still are!"

My gratitude lessened somewhat, because this felt like an announcement - or reminder - to the rest of them that we'd slept together. Cartman of course seized the opportunity.

"Are you two an item now?" he asked. "Kyle tells me you're having sex."

"Eric!" Kyle said, whirling on him with an absolutely vicious look, his fingers curling into a fist around his fork. For a moment I think we all truly believed were about to witness a murder, or at least a fork protruding from Cartman's eye. "Are you drunk? Stop being disgusting."

"I can't stop doing that, as you so often remind me," Cartman said. He was smiling, clearly enjoying Kyle's rage, and not even in a cruel way, I thought, though it was cruel to admire the way someone's features adapted to seething fury. Cartman just didn't know that: I think I had this epiphany then. He wasn't putting on an act when he complained to me that he didn't understand why Kyle didn't want to pet and cuddle him. He really thought he was a remarkably good husband, providing banter for Kyle to snap at and luxurious surroundings for Kyle to burrow into safely.

Realizing this only made me hate Cartman more, and my stomach was pinched tightly for the next three courses. I'd never seen Kenny eat so modestly, and I knew he must be suffering, too. The second half of the meal seemed to have been designed by Cartman: we endured pork enchiladas smothered in queso, fried fish tacos, and chicken tenders that were breaded with Cheezits. Cartman informed us of this after making us guess what we thought the breading was for upward of five minutes. The meal concluded with a cheesecake that had been 'imported from New York,' according to Cartman.

"It's Kyle's favorite," Cartman said, and there was some anxiety in his eyes when he glanced at Kyle for confirmation. Kyle had been silent since objecting to Cartman's comment about me and Craig. He accepted a large slice of cheesecake that Cartman dumped onto his plate, picked up his fork and sighed.  
"Eric is trying to make me fat," Kyle said, looking up at Kenny. His gaze slid to mine, then Craig's.

"You could use a little meat on your bones," Cartman said, cutting an even bigger piece of the cheesecake for himself. "It suits you. Look at your ass!"

"Cartman," Kenny said, with sharpness that made us all freeze and turn to him. "Please."

"Please what?" Cartman said after a disbelieving pause, his eyes narrowing. "I'll talk about my husband's ass if I want to."

"It's rude," Kyle said, hurriedly, before Kenny could speak again. "They don't want to hear your feelings on the subject. Oh, but all of you know Eric." He gave Kenny a pleading look. "You know how he is just as well as I do."

An unasked question hung over the table after that: if Kyle knew Cartman as well as we did, why on earth had he ever married him? There was this excuse about Cartman showing up in California and whisking Kyle away from his bad situation there, but that happened when they were nineteen, and they'd only married last year. It was impossible to imagine how Cartman had managed to keep him so long, and I feared that I would never get a real answer from anyone, least of all Kyle.

Brandy was brought in after lunch, which I found ridiculous, considering the weather, and exorbitant at that time of day, but I drained my glass rather quickly. Kyle was the only one of us who didn't drink. I found myself staring at him, thinking that he seemed to glow just a bit less than he had on that first day when he met me on the lawn and threw his arms around me. He was dimming slowly but steadily; I was sure that I wasn't only imagining it, as if this was an actual physical condition and he needed medical treatment that he was being denied.

"We should go to the city," Cartman said. "To the Brown Palace. I own it, you know. I bought it from Marriott when they were dumping signature properties."

"It was terrible investment," Kyle said, muttering.

"Well, sometimes it's not about the investment," Cartman said, and he eyed Kyle meaningfully. "Such as the cars - they depreciate instantly. Sometimes a person just wants to own a beautiful thing."

I had been to the Brown Palace before and don't know that I would have called it beautiful. It had a sort of dated, tacky opulence in the public spaces, gold accents and marble, flower-print carpeting. Our junior prom had been held in their ballroom. For this reason, feeling as nostalgic as ever for that evening when Kyle's hair first seemed designed to be stroked reverently, I agreed to go along with them. Craig did, too, and Kenny hesitated but finally relented.

"Kyle and I will take the CCX," Cartman said when a man in a driver's cap met us on the front steps, which looked out on a circular driveway featuring a massive fountain with pissing cherubs. "Bring the Bentley around for the others," Cartman said. He turned to us when his servant had jogged off. "Who wants to drive?" he asked, smirking as if this would determine which of us had the biggest balls.

"I'll drive," I said, because I didn't want Kenny to offer, since he'd had quite a bit to drink during the meal and seemed shaken by all of this. "I'm sure it won't surprise you to hear that this will be my first time behind the wheel of a Bentley."

"Oh, Stan," Kyle said, absently and without looking at me, as if no one should actually notice this comment, but everyone did. He looked up at us with surprise when he found we were staring at him. "Don't try to keep up with Cartman, he drives like a lunatic."

This, of course, made me determined to try. Cartman and Kyle climbed into the CCX, which had only two seats, and the rest of us piled into the Bentley, Craig taking the front passenger seat.

"Let the race begin," Craig said when I started the car.

"Are you alright back there?" I asked Kenny, embarrassed by how accurate Craig's prediction would surely be.

"I'm fine," Kenny said. "That meal was a little heavy on my stomach, is all."

"The way they eat is like a comedy routine," Craig said. "I never turn down an invitation to bear witness to it."

"Well, off we go," I said, squeezing the steering wheel with both hands before putting the car in drive. Already, I felt more powerful; I had never cared very much about cars like this, though I'd coveted Clyde's 1972 Chevelle in high school, but the smell of the gleaming leather interior and the way the engine seemed to bring the car to a kind of symbiotic life around me made me feel privileged and in control – then doubly disadvantaged when I considered that this was Cartman's expensive trifle, and that my being allowed to drive it was his joke at my expense.

I suppose if we'd been on open road it would have been pointless to try to keep up with Cartman's car - his other car - because it was built for speed, whereas the Bentley was more for cruising in style. The traffic necessitated some stops and slows for Cartman, however, and I was proud of myself for keeping pace with him on the highway, hoping that Kyle was watching in the rear view. When Cartman signaled to get off at the exit where we'd stopped during our last trip to Denver together, my heart clenched: did he actually have the balls to bring Kyle to Clyde's gas station, to torture him with the presence of Butters? Was it because Kenny was with us? I glanced over at Craig and saw that he was clutching at the seat with both hands, white-knuckled.

"Are you going to vomit?" I asked, feeling guilty for the way I'd been driving: like someone who didn't care about the welfare of his passengers, like Cartman. Craig glared at me.

"I don't know why I came," he said. "Is that Clyde's garage he's pulling into?"

"Yes."

"What was Kyle saying before, about Butters?" Kenny asked. "Isn't he married to Clyde? Why was he calling Cartman?"

"Ah, God," I said. "I forgot I hadn't told you the identity of Cartman's mistress. Are you surprised to hear that it's Butters? They always - did things together, apparently."

Kenny was frowning slightly, as if some part of that had confused him. I returned my eyes to the road. Cartman had already parked at a pump and was getting out of the car. To my horror, so was Kyle. I'm not sure what I was afraid of: that Kyle would become violent at the sight of Butters? If that was the case, it wasn't because I was worried about Butters suffering bodily harm. I was concerned instead that Kenny and I would suffer irreversible heartbreak if Kyle seemed to actually care that Cartman was cheating.

I parked the Bentley off to the side, away from the pumps, and when the three of us got out we heard shouting, but it was only Cartman ordering Clyde to get up and serve him.

"I suppose you think I should pump it myself?" Cartman barked at Clyde, who was seated on a folding chair in the shade of the main garage, looking ill.

"Most people do," Clyde said.

"Well, I'm not most people, am I, Clyde? Chop chop, motherfucker! Did you think I stopped here to admire the view?"

I took note of it then: the view from Clyde's garage and the neglected surroundings. On the other side of the turn off there was a massive old LensCrafters billboard angled toward the highway, peeling in places, advertising 'The Latest Sun Styles!' The print had been abused by the sun, faded in a way that made the 'latest styles' look even more dated. When I returned my eyes to the garage itself, I was startled to see someone in the upstairs window, presumably the attic apartment where Butters and Clyde lived. It was Butters, sitting against the window with his skinny knees pressed to the glass, wearing what looked like an over-sized t-shirt. His hair was greasy and disordered, and he looked like he'd been crying. He was staring very intently at Kyle.

"I'm not feeling well," Clyde said when he reached for the gas pump that Cartman had parked beside.

"We can pump the gas," Kyle said. "For God's sake." He had his arms crossed high and tight over his chest, as if he'd caught a chill in the ninety-degree weather.

"Let him do it," Cartman said, though Kyle hadn't lifted a finger to take the hand pump from Clyde. "He owes me as much, for interrupting our lunch."

"I didn't mean to," Clyde said. He sniffled and rubbed the sleeve of his jumpsuit under his nose. "I'm sorry. It's just that I could use the money. If you sold me that car – I could fix it up, turn it around. I could really use the money."

"What for?" Cartman asked.

"I've got to get away from here," Clyde was saying. He seemed feverish, perhaps from the heat, almost delirious. "Soon, too."

"Away from where?" Cartman glanced up at the attic then, and I saw him flinch at the sight of Butters, who scrambled away from the window when he'd been spotted. I was afraid he would come crashing onto the scene and throw himself at Cartman. I didn't want this, because I was afraid it would wound Kyle's pride. I was that protective of him, and somewhat disgusted with myself for it.

"Out of Colorado altogether," Clyde said, mumbling, while the price of the gas ticked upward on the pump. "Me and Butters - it's no good for us here anymore. He wants to move to California."

"Butters does?" Cartman frowned up at the window, which was still empty.

"Yeah," Clyde said. "He's been wanting that since we were kids. I used to promise him I'd make it happen. Now look where we are."

"You're still young," I said, disturbed by all of this.

"So we're moving," Clyde said, as if he hadn't heard me. "Soon as I can get the money." The pump clicked off then, the tank full.

"Listen, maybe I can sell it for ten thousand," Cartman said. He pressed some cash into Clyde's hand, for the gas. "I'll call you. I'll be in touch."

"I'd appreciate it," Clyde said, and he slumped back toward his chair in the shade. I saw Kyle peeking into the shadowy garage as if hoping for a glimpse of Butters, and was annoyed by how quickly he returned to the car when Cartman barked for him.

The rest of us climbed back into the Bentley, where I blasted the air conditioning and sped along behind Cartman, into the city. At the Brown Palace, the cars were whisked away by valets and our group was led to a private lounge overlooking the lobby. I could smell the spa: lavender and chlorine, lemongrass and cedar. It brought me right back to the night of my junior prom, and I was bold enough to sit beside Kyle on the sofa he dropped onto. He smiled at me when I did. Cartman and Craig took opposite sides of the sofa across from ours, and Kenny went to the window to peer down at the lobby. A man appeared offering champagne, nervously deferring to Cartman's grunted complaints about a line at the check-in desk that we'd walked past.

"I will take care of it, sir," he said. "Shall I bring any food?"

"Maybe later," Cartman said, and he threw back most of the champagne in his flute in one swallow. "Get lost, Maury. I'll call if I need anything."

"Very good, sir."

Maury left, and I noticed that there was gentle elevator music playing overhead, presumably the same stuff that was pumped into the lobby. Kyle was sipping champagne, his legs folded up, bare feet tucked under a throw pillow. He'd let his worn boating shoes drop off onto the floor. Cartman was muttering about his problems with the managerial staff, and Craig was watching Kenny, looking uneasy. I reached for a glass of champagne.

"I think I want to live someplace cold," Kyle said, interrupting Cartman in mid-rant. "To hell with the West. I don't care for these extreme seasons. It's like I'm always having to relearn how to exist."

"You're only saying that 'cause it's hot now," Cartman said. "In the winter you wanted to move to the desert, remember?"

"I remember very little of what I say these days," Kyle said, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if Cartman's voice was giving him a headache.

"That's a bad habit to get into," Craig said.

"Well, what's another bad habit." Kyle finished his champagne, set the empty glass on the table between the two sofas and slumped over toward me in a way that made me nervous. I saw Cartman notice, his eyelids lowering in a prey-seeking way. Kenny turned from the window.

"We had our prom here," I said. "A million years ago."

"Seven years ago," Kyle said. "Only seven. Or eight? Yeah, eight."

"I had sex with Patty whats-her-face that night," Cartman said, and he grinned.

"Not Butters?" Kyle said lightly. Craig twitched, and I was relieved to meet his eyes and remember that neither of us was alone there - but Craig wasn't _there_, precisely, not like I was.

"I won't even dignify that," Cartman said. "Yours is the only ass I go gay for."

Kyle simply snorted at this and let it drop. He looked over at Kenny and scooted toward me, beckoning him to sit with us. Kenny hesitated, then came, sitting on the other side of Kyle. I could see that Kenny was shaking; I wondered it if was rage. It was always hard to say, with Kenny.

"Our prom," Kyle said, clutching Kenny's arm. "We all went together, remember? Well, all of us but Cartman."

"I didn't go at all," Craig said. "I was home crying over the fact that Clyde went with Bebe."

"You had feelings for Clyde?" I said, shocked. Cartman laughed heartily at this. Craig shrugged and sipped champagne, seemingly unfazed.

"I was a child," he said. "And Clyde was adorable back then. It's sad to see him - like that. I wish I could help them somehow."

"Eric is helping them," Kyle said, still hanging onto Kenny's arm in a way that was making me angry. "Aren't you? Selling Clyde some car, apparently?"

"Clyde needs more than an old Porsche to get his ass out of debt," Cartman said. "But it's none of our concern. That's the beautiful thing about this country, the thing that I'm trying to preserve. A way of life that those of us who've worked hard have actually earned." He gave Kenny a menacing look. "Don't you agree?" he asked.

"No," Kenny said. "I'm glad someone was concerned enough to issue food stamps to my parents when I was a kid. Their mistakes weren't mine. Aren't mine."

"Well, sure," Cartman said. He was looking at Kyle's pale hand on Kenny's jacket sleeve. "You would never do anything illegal to make money. Not like those scheming folks of yours. To Kenny's success, pure as virgin snow!" Cartman lifted a fresh glass of champagne in a toast that no one joined him in. Just the word 'virgin' had set me on edge, and I could feel Kyle stiffen beside me. "How did you get started, anyway?" Cartman asked Kenny after he drank. "I've been curious." He was smiling like he already knew.

"Someone had faith in me," Kenny said. "How'd you get started?"

"That's public record, Kenny. I took my paving proposals to several major Colorado investors, and they gave me start up money."

"Yes, but why?" I said, throwing caution to the wind. Cartman turned his hateful look on me. "You were barely twenty, a college drop out. Why would they trust you with their money?"

"Just tell them, Eric," Kyle said. He was rubbing at the bridge of his nose again; he'd released Kenny's arm. "There's no shame in it."

"I'll thank you not to lecture me about shame," Cartman said, and Kyle's eyes flew open. The mood in the room had been jerked violently, as if yanked by a chain; suddenly all our blood was boiling, with the exception of Craig, who - I was sure - wouldn't know why the word _shame_, applied to Kyle, would fling us at last into the flames at our backs.

"He enticed child molesters," Kyle said, loudly, to Kenny. "When we were young - very young. Who would ever think of that? Only Eric. He blackmailed them, had been stockpiling money in secret for years. These were influential men - the deputy governor at the time, who had a paving business. Eric basically bought him out, and intimidated him into arranging for the state highway contracts-"

"Enough!" Cartman said. He slammed the champagne glass down, making what was left in it fizz wildly. "That's private family business. Shut your Jew mouth, Kyle, or I-"

"Hey, hey," Craig said, but it was too late - Kenny had already leapt up.

"Did you let them fuck you?" Kenny asked, glowering at Cartman. "These perverts? I wouldn't put it past you. Anything for money, right?"

"Look who's talking!" Cartman said, laughing.

"At least I tried to do it honestly-"

"Stop it!" Kyle said, pulling on the back of Kenny's jacket. "Stop shouting, both of you-"

"Honestly, ha!" Cartman stood, too, and I began to fear that he would have hotel security drag Kenny out to the street. He was never one for fighting his own battles. "And a lot of good your attempt at an honest career in food service did for Kyle! He was wasting away, and you were allowing it, out of some kind of redneck pride that you must have inherited from your parents - he had _fleas_ when I got there! He had to have three rotting teeth pulled-"

"Stop it!" Kyle shrieked, and he jumped up beside Kenny. "Shut the fuck up!" He was on the verge of tears; I stood and took his arm, but he shook me off.

"None of this would have happened if it wasn't for you," Kenny said, jabbing his finger at Cartman. "You ruined everything for all of us, and you knew exactly what you were doing."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Cartman asked.

"The drugs!" Kenny shouted. "Your birthday!"

"Stop," Kyle said again, weakly now.

"Kenny," I said, beginning to tremble. I glanced at Craig, who was the only one still seated, frozen on the couch.

"And who brought us the drugs, huh?" Cartman said. "Who had access, which deadbeat among us took my money and brought what I asked him to get? Don't give me that holier than thou shit. You're the one who fucking ran away, leaving him to think he was to blame-"

Kyle hurried from the room then, in tears. I held up my hand when Craig moved to follow him.

"Stay here with these idiots and make sure they don't kill each other," I said. "I'll get Kyle."

Cartman and Kenny were still shouting, having barely noticed Kyle's departure. I wanted to tell them both to hold their tongues with Craig listening in, but they were back to fighting about what had happened in California, not what had happened in South Park. Only when I left the room did I realize how hard my heart was beating, and I looked around wildly until I saw Kyle weeping near an elevator bank.

"Wait!" I cried when an elevator arrived and he rushed into it. I ran to him, and was able to catch the doors before they closed. Kyle was huddled in the back corner of the elevator, his hands over his face. I jammed the button for the ballroom level and went to him, hugging him from behind.

"I never had fleas!" he said while I shushed him and rubbed his back, flushed with cruel happiness for being allowed to do so. "I - the bed did, the mattress in that place, and the carpet, but they weren't on me, they weren't in my _hair_-"

"Cartman is an idiot," I said, whispering. "Kenny, too, for. For saying anything at all. They're both drunk. Fuck them. Fuck them both."

The ride to the ballroom level didn't take long, but I'd eased Kyle around to face me by the time the doors dinged open. He let me wipe the tears from his cheeks, and he met my eyes shyly.

"I can't do this," he said.

"You don't have to do anything. Let's disappear somewhere." I meant far from Colorado, and forever. "There's a little garden, isn't there?"

"You know there is," he said, smiling weakly as I led him from the elevator. We'd sat in the courtyard garden and talked during the prom, me drunkenly pontificating, Kyle playing with some flower he'd plucked. The elevator music overhead had seemed so delicate and lovely compared to the thumping hip hop they were playing for us in the ballroom.

"Well," I said as we walked together toward the garden, "I wasn't sure if it had been ripped out or something. For renovations."

"I wouldn't have let him," Kyle said, sniffling.

The garden was as I remembered it, with a modest fountain in the center and a variety of tropical plants. It was an artificial oasis in the middle of the hotel, walled off from the halls and the lobby. There were palms and hibiscus, orchids here and there, and the walls were covered in green vines, little white flowers growing on them in scattered blooms. Kyle took my hand and pulled me off the cement walkway that wound through the garden, into the same corner where we'd hidden with my flask when were sixteen, beneath a crop of giant elephant ears, their heart-shaped leaves offering some cover.

"Aren't we too big for this now?" I asked as I squeezed in beside him, seated on a mossy rock.

"I haven't grown much," he said, threading his arm through mine. We were pressed together with our backs to the vine-covered wall, shoulder to hip. That hadn't been the case eight years ago. I sighed and put my hand on his knee, wishing I had that flask again.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

"Well, no," he said. "I'm not. I don't know what to do."

"Do you love Kenny?" I asked, fearing the answer. "Will you be with him when you leave Cartman?"

"Stan," Kyle said, and he closed his eyes. "Don't ask me things like that. I never know what I'll do. Most of the time I just do nothing."

"I hate this," I said. "I feel responsible."

Kyle shook his head slowly, his eyes still closed. He squeezed my arm, and I took this as a cue to brush my thumb over the corner of his right eye, clearing away fresh tears.

"That apartment was so awful," Kyle said. "Cartman says the word 'fleas' and I'm right back there, stuck, more alone every day. We had four roommates, two of them prostitutes. You know, male ones. Gigolos, or whatever you call them."

"Why didn't you ask me for help? Why him?"

"Because I was - my teeth were rotting out, Stan! I was covered in flea bites, and I smelled like dishwater, and - I didn't want you to see me like that! Him, what did I care - I thought he might laugh at me, but at least I wouldn't be humiliated in front of someone whose opinion actually mattered. But he - he bought me dinner. A real dinner, with meat and cloth napkins. He took me to see a dentist."

"How about your parents?" I asked, not wanting to hear about Cartman's charity.

"How about them? They were furious when they found out I left school, and when I didn't come home for the summer. You know I'm afraid of my mother. But Eric - Cartman, I mean. He smoothed everything over with them somehow. You know how he is when he wants something. He fattened me up a bit - I must have weighed less than a hundred pounds, before - and he took me home to them with shining white veneers and my hair looking nice for the first time in as long as I could remember, and we all wept and embraced and they loved him. We went to synagogue with my parents. God, I'm disgusted when I think of it now."

"He called you a Jew," I said, enraged by the picture he was painting. "Just now, he shouted at you-"

"Yes, yes. He hates me because he loves me. If that makes sense at all."

"No, it doesn't. Not to me. And if he loves you, why-" I thought of Butters, and when Kyle looked at me I knew we were sharing this thought.

"To punish me, I guess," Kyle said. "For not loving him back. And that's what he wants me to be, or so he thinks - his little lap dog, the person he purchased, someone to squeal gratefully when he comes home with presents."

"If he wants that, then he never loved you. Or understood you, appreciated you-"

"Well - who gives a fuck what he wants!" Kyle squeezed my arm hard, and brought his face so close to mine that I thought we would kiss. "The point is, all of this is over. I'm going to take half his money and disappear into Canada. I'll live where no one knows me, where no one knows about any of it, about Kyle and what he was like as kid or whatever you all think of me now. I've got to erase all that."

"You gave me the same speech when you came to see me at Trinity that year. Almost word for word."

"Oh. I did, didn't I?"

"Kyle, please. I don't want you to erase yourself. I want-" I was going to say that I wanted to talk about what had happened at last, to really talk about it, but it would have been a lie. I was still terrified where that incident was concerned, instantly sixteen again. "I want you to be in my life," I said. "Not just some memory."

Kyle laughed so loudly that I moved my face back a bit.

"Why would you want this in your life?" he asked. "Any of this? You look so haunted when you're with me. I saw you at college - you were free of it all, there. Me and Kenny, and Cartman, too - we'll never be free of it."

"Why do you exclude me? You think I don't feel things as deeply as they do? What bullshit!"

"It's not that! It's that you know you have a chance for happiness, a real one, and the rest of us know that we don't! Why do you think they both own a thousand cars apiece? We're empty, just - empty inside."

"Don't include yourself. You're not empty. You're not the one buying cars."

"Stan, wake up! This isn't even my nose!" He touched it self consciously. "And I love it. I could stare at it for hours. It's such a relief to be less like myself."

"I hate when you talk like that," I said, remembering his most awkward years, twelve and thirteen, when everything he had to say about himself was a heartless condemnation. "And it's not so different from the old one," I said, stroking one fingertip from the bridge of his nose to the tip. "You still look like you."

Kyle stared at me for a moment, transfixed. My heart began to race again, and I tried not to breathe too loudly, listening to the gurgle of the fountain and the tinkly piano music.

"Do you think they've exchanged blows yet?" Kyle asked.

"Kenny and Cartman? I don't know. I don't care."

"Don't you care about Kenny? Aren't you rekindling your friendship?"

"I care about him, of course, but he's so remote. I hardly see him, he's always working. On what I have no idea."

"Has he told you where he got his initial financing?" Kyle asked, lowering his voice.

"No," I said, crestfallen. "What does it even matter?"

"It's just that he was never like Eric. Never lucky, never scheming. Kenny always got the short straw."

"Mine feels like the shortest these days."

"Oh, Stan, no. That's not true. That's not true at all."

He moved closer to me, taking both of my hands between his, as if to warm them. I was afraid to look in his eyes. I knew that if I did he would see how badly I wanted to kiss him, to taste the flavors of that ludicrous lunch on his tongue, and I thought it would embarrass him to know that I still wanted him the way I had that day.

"You should run far away from all of us," Kyle said, whispering. "I feel like something terrible is going to happen soon."

"Like what?"

"I couldn't say. Maybe they'll murder each other, or me."

"I won't let them hurt you any more than they already have."

I looked up into his eyes as I said so, suddenly unafraid. He seemed struck, his hands twitching anxiously around mine. I was overcome with momentary anger over what he had done to his nose; I wanted the old one back, the bump and the fat tip that made the rest of his features seem all the more delicate in contrast.

"Don't look at me like that," he said, pushing my hands away.

"Like what?"

"As if I'm this sad, sullied little thing. Poor, broken Kyle. You _all_ look at me that way, even Cartman. I suppose it's only natural."

"It's not - I don't-"

Before I could scramble together a real response, the door to the garden opened, and we heard footsteps on the walkway. I recognized the gait, and had another memory of our prom night: Kenny had found us in the garden eventually.

"I knew you would be here," he said when he squatted down to peer beneath the giant heart-shaped leaves, pushing one out of the way.

"Did you hit him or anything?" Kyle asked, crawling toward Kenny. I wanted to pull him back by the loops on his jeans.

"No," Kenny said. "But I think. He made some accusations."

"Accusations?"

"About me and you. I think the servants might have gossiped." Kenny glanced at me when he said this. I was on all fours, stumbling back toward the walkway, feeling like an idiot. Kenny was holding Kyle's hands in his, loosely, clutching only at Kyle's fingertips.

"Shit," Kyle said. "That would ruin my chances at getting alimony."

"But you won't need his money," Kenny said, so softly that I actually managed to feel for him, while still hating him for having Kyle's hands in his. He didn't for long: Kyle pulled away, scratching at his head.

"But he hasn't got any proof," he said, pacing. "Has he?" He whirled on Kenny, who shook his head slowly, not necessarily in answer to that question. The door to the lobby opened again, and Craig peeked inside, frowning.

"Let's get the hell out of here," he called. "Please."

We rode down to the lobby in silence, and were met there by Cartman, who seemed incredibly drunk. He was snapping at some woman who worked behind the counter for not recognizing him as the owner. She was on the verge of tears, nodding rapidly as he berated her. Kyle surprised me by stomping over to him, grabbing his arm and forcibly yanking him away from the counter.

"We're leaving," he said. "Now."

"Oh, what's this?" Cartman said, tottering. "We? I thought maybe you'd leave with that string bean. Your slumming hobby horse."

"You're not even making sense," Kyle said, tugging Cartman toward the front doors. "And you're embarrassing yourself, you hypocrite."

"I'm a hypocrite? Me? Okay." Cartman scoffed wetly and wheeled around to point at me. "There's your – there's your hypocrite. Saint Stan! Prince Stan! Well, he had his turn, too, didn't he?"

Before I could rush Cartman and knock him on his ass, Kyle slapped his cheek. Everyone in the lobby froze; even the elevator music seemed to quiet.

"Why don't you ride back with your other darling prince?" Cartman said, shoving Kyle away from him. "Keh – Kenny, yeah, here." He reached into his pants pocket and threw a set of keys at Kenny. They bounced off his chest and dropped to the floor. "Take the CCX. Take Kyle, too, take him wherever you want."

"You fucking pig," Kenny said. He bent down and picked up the keys, then took Kyle's elbow. I was afraid that he would drive that car all the way down to the Mexican border, that I would never see either of them again. "You ruin everything you touch," Kenny said as he led Kyle away, toward the doors. Kyle was looking back at us; I met his eyes and wanted to chase after him, to pull him free from Kenny's grasp. But then Kyle turned away, and went willingly to wherever Kenny was taking him.

"Those little shits," Cartman said when Kenny and Kyle were outside, heading to the valet stand. He slapped my back and gave me a long, drunken stare. "I know he fucked you up, too," he said.

"Kenny?" I said, stupidly – or stubbornly. Cartman rolled his eyes so hard that I thought for a moment he was having a seizure.

"Let's have another round," he said. "Then I'll go home, to my stately manor. Neither of you have one of those, last time I checked."

I had actually forgotten that Craig was there. I turned to him and saw him reading this on my face. His expression became a kind of mask again, the way I remembered it from high school.

"To hell with another round," he said. "Stan, please. Drive us home."

Cartman didn't protest; he was oddly quiet until we were in the car. I was driving, Craig silent and seething up front, and Cartman in the back seat. When I checked the rear view Cartman looked like he had just learned that there was no Santa Claus, that it was only Liane, exhausted and strapped for cash after fulfilling his Christmas wishes, who had laid his charmless presents out.

"I just remembered," he said, when he saw me looking at him. "It's my birthday."

It was July first, somehow: Cartman was twenty-five years old. I think it was out of some odd form of respect that Craig and I didn't say anything in response to this. We withheld what even Cartman would know to be insincere well wishes. I believe, to this day, that he appreciated that.

There were four cars stopped at Clyde's garage as we approached the exit ramp, and they weren't there to fill up on gas. They were scattered across the road in a haphazard fashion, surrounding an obscured scene that I could smell already as I slowed the Bentley: burning rubber, and something darker. As we drew closer I saw people covering their mouths, eyes gaping, all pointed in the same direction.

"Oh, good," Cartman said. "Someone crashed? Clyde will finally have some business."

I pulled the car over, thinking I might help, since everyone else present seemed to be frozen in horror. I'm not good with blood, but I'm worse with convenient indifference. Cartman seemed even more eager to reach the crowd than I was, practically skipping forward to see the damage. Someone was wailing; I thought it sounded familiar. Only when we reached the edge of the crowd did I remember where I'd heard it before: at Clyde's mother's funeral.

Sirens in the distance seemed to echo Clyde's howl: it was Butters on the pavement, covered for the most part by a blanket that looked like the sort of thing that was normally draped over a mechanic's dolly before it slid under the body of a car. I looked at Cartman, legitimately terrified for him in the moment. His face was blown wide by shock in a way I hadn't seen since I was maybe eight or nine years old, the last time that the bottom had dropped out of one of schemes, leaving him in free fall.

"People saw a black car," Clyde said when he lifted his face and focused enough to recognize Cartman there in the crowd. "Exotic, they said. Expensive looking. Like your car. He didn't even stop – some car like yours." Clyde was rocking, cradling Butters awkwardly. The sirens drew closer, until they were almost deafening, but I didn't miss what Cartman said to Clyde then, sounding as if he'd sobered completely.

"I loaned it to Kenny," Cartman said. "My car, if that's what you saw. Kenny, he. He's dangerous, he's unhinged. Drunk with power, you know. New money, they think. They think they can do anything."

"The coward!" Clyde cried, pinching his eyes shut and tipping his chin back. "He didn't even stop!"

I stared at Butters' face, which hadn't changed very much since I knew him as a child. His eyes were open. I thought: someone should close them. Why hadn't anyone closed his goddamn eyes?

Despite my outrage, I didn't move forward to do it. The police arrived and began to question witnesses. Cartman clammed up then, and Clyde blubbered Kenny's name once, but was barely coherent. On the drive home, I again remembered that Craig was beside me, and I wanted to apologize to him.

"Poor Clyde," I said. I felt like I had killed Butters myself.

No one responded, and I thought of how we had chosen not to remark on Cartman's birthday. I realized why I felt culpable as we drew closer to the lake. It was the saying nothing, ultimately, that had changed so much for the worse. I had known this before, but it had never weighed more heavily on me: that Kyle had looked to me that night, the night of Cartman's birthday, when the others had gone, and he had waited to hear even the smallest, teenaged reassurance. I love you, I could have said, and I would have meant it. I'm sorry, too, and, I will be here tomorrow if you want me, and every day afterward. Things would have been different if I had tried even the meagerest words of comfort. Butters would be alive. Kyle wouldn't call himself empty, and the rest of us wouldn't be empty without him.

Perhaps that was a fantasy: as I pulled into the driveway of Cartman's mansion, and when he stumbled wordlessly toward his awaiting servants, I felt sure that everyone was empty in one way or another. Still, I was counting the minutes until I could rescue Kyle from this new disaster. If Kenny had run over Butters, I would be the only one left for Kyle, his last choice, and also the one who would not fail him.


	6. Chapter 6

Finally done with this story! I should be packing, since I leave for the airport in two hours and have done nothing, but I had to finish this first! I hope you guys have enjoyed it, and thanks again to all who have reviewed and sent notes - please let me know what you think of this ending! I would appreciate feedback on this one greatly.

* * *

For two days, I couldn't get in touch with any of them. Even Craig wasn't taking my calls, though I suppose that shouldn't have surprised me. Kenny had fired his entire household staff the day after the accident, and when I roamed through the empty rooms of his mansion in search of him I felt as if I was being watched by the apparitions of his dismissed butlers and maids. I also felt unprotected, afraid to turn a corner and come upon someone who'd wandered off the street to steal the candlesticks from the dining room table. Wherever Kenny was during the day, he managed to sneak back quietly under cover of night, and in the mornings when I would go looking for him again I would find plates with crumbs and dirty wine glasses on the counter near the kitchen sink, as if awaiting a dish washer. Finally, I washed them myself, thinking of Kyle in some grubby kitchen in Los Angeles, trying not to cry while he scrubbed restaurant cutlery.

On the third day I couldn't wait any longer, and I took a boat across the lake in search of Kyle. I wasn't sure of myself, piloting the thing, having had a bad experience with a speed boat in my youth. Cartman had been at my side that day, as he always seemed to be when I was getting myself into terrible trouble. I was surprised not to be received by anyone at Cartman's dock, and I parked the boat clumsily, then secured precariously with rope before jogging up toward the house. I already had a bad feeling about what I would find when I got there.

There was an eerie quiet as a I crossed the perfect back lawn. Something had changed: at first I thought it was just the absence of bugs singing, as if Cartman had removed all trespassing insects from his property, but as I drew closer to the pool I realized that the fountains had been turned off. A man was cleaning the pool, and he looked frightened when I approached him. I can only imagine what I looked like as the first suspicion about what had happened dawned on me.

"Is it alright if I go up to the house?" I asked, then immediately felt stupid for asking permission. I had been cowardly all summer, letting a wall of servants that Cartman had built keep me away from seeing Kyle when I wanted to, and letting Kenny avoid me by hiding away with his 'work.'

"The house?" the man said. He was short and stocky, wearing a gold chain, jeans and a t-shirt - not in uniform.

"I'm looking for Kyle," I said, more forcefully, and I started to walk off.

"Oh, they've left," the man said.

"Left?" I turned, my hands in fists. On second thought, I do know how I must have looked: like a murderer who had come to kill the man of the house and leave with Kyle slung over my shoulder.

"For the summer," the man said. "Left early this year."

"Where did they go?" I asked, disbelieving. I whirled to look at the house, noticing that the patio doors were all shut, the upstairs windows shuttered.

"I don't know," the man said. "Maybe Harris knows."

Harris was the head butler. He was extremely rude to me, and told me that he was not at liberty to disclose the location of the Cartman family at present. Hearing Cartman and Kyle described as a 'family,' I felt as if Harris had gently rolled a boulder onto me, flattening me instantly. I couldn't move for some time. Harris stared at me, frowning.

"They have a penthouse in Denver, don't they?" I said. I'm not sure how I knew this; Kenny might have mentioned it. Harris only stared at me coldly until I left.

I went back to the guest house, defeated, and tried Kyle's cell again. When there was no answer I cursed him, and hung up before his voice mail could record my fury. I wasn't sure that I should even be mad at him: perhaps this was all Cartman's doing. Kyle denied that Cartman was pulling his strings, but things had changed now. Kyle was a witness to the accident. I was shocked that police hadn't been to the house yet, but perhaps it hadn't been Cartman's car that was involved in the accident after all. Or perhaps Kenny was rich enough to pay the police to keep quiet about his hit and run. The only inquiries I'd dared to make were about the funeral arrangements.

I raided Kenny's booze that night and left him a drunken, angry note asking if he planned to attend the memorial service for Butters. Of course I knew he wouldn't be there. With his drivers dismissed, I called up Wendy for a ride in lieu of borrowing one of the gleaming cars in his garage.

"You don't look well," she said as soon as I was in the passenger seat of her Volvo.

"I haven't been sleeping," I said.

"I'm still in shock about Butters," she said, and she reached over to touch my knee. "I hadn't seen him in four or five years, but he was always part of the landscape, you know? When we were kids?"

"The landscape has largely deteriorated, yes."

"You haven't heard from Kenny at all?" She was looking at me while she drove. I wanted to point at the road to direct her eyes to it.

"Kenny is going through some things," I said. I had no doubt that he was devastated about the accident, and on one level I was surprised that he hadn't turned himself in, if it was him who had done it. I suspected, however, that he would compromise his morals for the sake of rescuing Kyle, which, it seemed, was still possible. For him, anyway. I didn't even have the means to reach him, wherever he was.

The turnout for Butters' funeral was impressive, and many people were weeping sincerely before the service even began. I hadn't been inside a chapel since college, and I felt guilty about this as I stood beside Wendy, holding a 'remembrance candle' with a little paper circle around its holster to catch wax drippings. I felt as if people would soon turn and point to me as the reason for this tragedy, or at least one of the conspirators. No one noticed me, however. Certainly not Clyde, who was so bent by grief that he could barely walk, his father holding one of his arms and Butters' similarly devastated mother holding the other. I threw up in the bushes as soon as the service concluded.

"Do you want to go on to the grave site?" Wendy asked, rubbing my back while I recovered. I was wearing the suit Kenny had bought for me, and I only really considered this when I wiped my mouth on the sleeve. "Or are you too sick?" Wendy asked when I turned to look at her.

"I think I need to leave town altogether," I said.

"Probably true," she said, softly, after studying my eyes for a moment.

We headed toward the crowded parking lot, and I was surprised to see Craig standing in a group that was gathered at the end of the chapel's main walkway. He spotted me and I was frightened, as if he would be the one to point me out as a contributor to the loss we were mourning. Instead, he came over to us with a sigh, and squeezed my shoulder when our eyes met.

"You look a little green," he said.

"Stan gets overwhelmed," Wendy said, somewhat defensively. Craig glanced at her, raised his eyebrows slightly, then returned his gaze to me.

"I threw up, is what she means," I said. "Over there, in the bushes."

"I'm sure God will forgive you," Craig said, and I had to brace myself to keep from stumbling backward. He shook his head very slightly. "I mean for throwing up in his bushes."

"I'm going to take him home," Wendy said. "I think he's coming down with something."

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," I grumbled.

"Let me take him," Craig said. "I'm headed that way anyhow."

I knew this was a lie; Craig's apartment was on the opposite side of the lake from Kenny's manor. I wanted to go with him, though, to talk openly to someone - to the only person who was willing to talk to me, at last, after what had happened on the way back from Denver that day. As we walked together to his car it was all I could do not to grab him and make him hug me. I needed comfort, conversation - I needed to get far away from the lake and South Park and Colorado altogether, but I couldn't imagine anyone who wasn't part of what I was going through bringing me actual consolation. Craig was close enough to part of it, I thought.

"You're a mess," Craig said as he pulled out of the parking lot, me trembling and seasick in the passenger seat, correctly identified as a mess. "Where's Kenny? Not that I thought he would come, but. Did he really-? Was it - his car, that-?"

"I don't know," I said. "He's avoiding me. He fired all his servants."

"Is that what they call them, servants?"

"That's what Cartman called his, I'm sure. He's gone, left for the summer, shut up the house. I don't know if he took Kyle with him. He probably did, but I hate to think that Kyle would go willingly."

"It's worse to think that he didn't," Craig said, frowning. "I haven't heard from him. Tried calling-"

"Me too. No answer. Why does he even have a phone?"

"He must have been very shaken. He was in the car, saw the whole thing, saw Kenny drive off. If that's what happened. Jesus, it's just what he doesn't need right now. Just enough to send him crawling back to Cartman."

"What?" I turned from the window and glared at Craig, though this theory was hardly outlandish. "I don't understand. Kenny runs over Butters - maybe - and that reinforces Kyle's bond with Cartman? How?" I hated to think that there was any bond at all, aside from the financial one.

"Think about it," Craig said. "It's like last time. Kyle tries to be good for Kenny, to live up to however Kenny sees him, and it's not as fun as Kyle hoped it would be-"

"He's not been having fun? With Kenny?"

"Not that I've seen," Craig said, mumbling. "Kenny is so remote. Kyle needs someone who will either lash out at him or endlessly reassure him. Kenny is just - he's like a faithful dog."

"Don't reduce him to that."

Craig scoffed. "Well, he might have killed someone, so maybe that's an insult to faithful dogs, not the other way around. In any event, it's like last time. Kenny fails him, so Kyle runs to Cartman. Who else would have him?" Craig gave me a meaningful stare.

"Keep your eyes on the goddamn road," I said. "God knows when some other former classmate of ours might come tearing out into the street."

It was very bright out when we arrived at the guest house, and I was glad when Craig pulled the car under the trees that shadowed the driveway. It had been ruthlessly sunny all day, hot and dry. I could still taste vomit in my mouth, but I didn't want to be alone.

"Come in," I said, sliding my hand up Craig's thigh.

"What for?" he asked.

"I'd like to fuck you," I said, so shaken that I could only be honest. His eyes widened slightly, then sank at the corners. He turned off the car.

"Alright," he said, and we got out.

Inside, we passionlessly put things in order before heading to the bedroom: I took off my coat, tie, and Craig did the same. We gulped water from the filtered faucet at the kitchen sink. Craig kept eying me as if waiting for me to strike. I was enjoying the feeling, glad that he knew it would be different this time.

"Go undress and get in my bed," I said. "I need to brush my teeth."

I didn't, really; we wouldn't be kissing. He walked off to do as I'd asked, and I went into the hall bathroom to rinse with mouthwash and splash some cold water on my face. I felt as if Wendy was right, that I was coming down with something, and also that I didn't have time to be ill, because there were still mountains to climb to get to Kyle. I just didn't know where those mountains were exactly.

I unbuttoned my shirt as I walked to the bedroom, and in the doorway I stopped to remove my belt, observing Craig as he reclined, nude, in my bed.

"You could tie my wrists," he said, lifting them over his head. He had sparse black underarm hair and almost no hair at all on his chest. I remembered noticing that about him in the locker room in high school.

"You don't mind bottoming?" I asked, dropping the belt to the floor. I wasn't in the mood for theatrics, just something rough and fast.

"Mind?" he said, and he flexed; he really was rather beautiful himself, very pale and well-toned in a way that looked effortless, smooth lines and lean muscles. "I love it," he said. He brought his arms down again, resting his hands on his chest. "I've been waiting for you to ask."

I took him the way I'd taken every guy I'd been with when we did it for the first time, which, for many of those guys, was also the last: on his hands and knees, from behind, his head down, ass up. I liked to think that the cozy intimacy of face-to-face sex was reserved for my memory of having Kyle that way, which was ludicrous, both because we hadn't been alone when it happened and because I'd fucked a few other guys that way in the past, always regretting it when it didn't live up to my impossibly complicated first time with Kyle. I sometimes tried to tell myself it had only been the ecstasy that elevated my experience, but I knew that drug wasn't entirely to blame for any of it.

Craig came in my hand while I was still in him, which surprised me. He was laughing after I finished, breathless and sweaty, turning onto his side to peek at me after I'd slid out.

"What?" I said, the last throbs of my orgasm still pulsing through me.

"Nothing," he said. "It just figures that you'd give someone a reach around while you pound them like that. It's so like you."

"Don't make fun of me," I said, and I slapped his ass, trying to be playful. He didn't smile.

"You can be very dim," he said. "I wonder sometimes if it's intentional."

"Enough analysis," I said, and I went to get us some water.

Craig stayed with me that night, for which I was very grateful. We huddled together under a single sheet, Kenny's air conditioning flowing over us at an environmentally irresponsible temperature. I couldn't sleep and wanted to drink, or at least eat, but also didn't feel like moving. I was surprised when Craig went along with this without a word, his thumb occasionally moving through the hairs on the back of my hand.

"I'm much hairier than you," I said. Craig grunted.

"You fuck like a hairy lumberjack," he said.

"Sorry."

"No, it's. I liked it."

I closed my eyes, thinking about how unusual it was for someone with such dark hair to be so smooth, wondering if he waxed, and my mind drifted to Kyle as I began to fall asleep. The hair on Kyle's arms was a slightly softer shade of red than the curls on his head, and he was bushy between his legs, or had been. I wondered if he waxed now, if he would ever miss his old nose as much as I did, and if I would ever see him again.

When I woke, Craig was gone. I went to the kitchen in my boxer shorts, seeking more water, and found a note on the table, held down by an empty tea saucer with some crumbs on it.

_I ate one of your mini wheat bagels. It was dreadfully stale, but I didn't have dinner, so I was desperate. -C_

I felt accused by the word 'desperate,' though I doubted he'd meant it that way. I drank my water, picked up the bag of mini wheat bagels, then set them down again. Though there would be no staff to serve me over at Kenny's house, at least he had a pantry and several large refrigerators stocked with food, most of it still fresh.

I glanced at the lake as I always did on the way to the main house, in the direction of Cartman's estate, and was shocked to see Kenny down by the dock in his usual manner, standing and looking in that direction himself. I broke into a run, afraid that he would vanish like a mirage as I drew closer, or like a ghost.

"Hey!" I shouted as I approached, not bothering to hide the fact that I was angry with him. "Where the hell have you been?"

He was annoyingly calm in response to my outrage, smiling at me. I thought he looked pale, maybe because he was wearing white pants and a white jacket over a faded pink shirt.

"I ran out of clean clothes," he said when he saw me noticing his attire.

"I guess that's a concern when you fire all the people who manage your life."

"Yes, well. They were gossiping, and I can't take any risks."

"Why, because they might go to the police?"

He turned back toward Cartman's house - Kyle's house - and slid his hands into the pockets of his pants.

"Answer me," I said, walking down to grab his shoulder. "I was at Butters' funeral yesterday, for fuck's sake. People at the scene of the accident were saying it was a car like Cartman's that hit him." Kenny only stared at me. "Well?" I shouted, on the verge of shoving him. "Was it?"

"Are you going to have me arrested?" Kenny asked.

I tore my hand away from him in disgust, but at the same time, there was something in me that simply couldn't believe it. Whatever he'd done to win Damien's favor, I knew that Kenny had an unshakable, almost childlike core of morality that would never allow him to drive away from someone he'd hurt, and especially from someone like Butters, a childhood friend. It was the reason Kenny had left town after what we did to Kyle - he couldn't bear to be the bad guy, wasn't able to live with himself as a potential reminder of Kyle's pain. He would go to great lengths to protect his loved ones, as he had for Kyle, but he wasn't selfish. He never had been. My heart dropped when I saw the anxiety in his eyes and realized what had happened.

"Kyle," I said. My throat went dry; I needed more water. "Kyle was driving."

"You can't tell anyone," Kenny said, walking toward me when I took a few stunned steps away from him. "You won't try to, will you? You wouldn't - it was an accident, he was so upset. He was saying - he never gets to drive, that he's always a passenger, that he's never had any real control over his life. That's my fault, Stan. I did that to him when I brought Cartman those drugs. How could I not have seen what his plan was, why he wanted to do them with all of us - with Kyle, and with me and you there to fool Kyle into thinking he was safe? And I, and you - I just wanted him to feel like he had some agency. I offered to let him drive, and he lit right up. You'd think it was the first nice thing anyone had done for him in years. Maybe it was."

"You sound insane," I said, my heart hammering after what he'd said about Cartman's birthday, his culpability and mine. On the grim anniversary of that disaster, we'd driven Kyle to ruin again. "I won't tell anyone," I said when I noticed Kenny's jaw shifting as he stared at me, possible murder plots formulating behind his eerily serene blue eyes. They were like mine, dark blue. The color of the lake when the light touched it a certain way. "You know I'd do anything for Kyle," I said, angrily.

"Yes," Kenny said, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. "Anyway, it was an accident. Kyle is beside himself with guilt. But it does no one any good for him to go to jail. Does it bring Butters back if Kyle suffers? No. He's suffered enough, anyhow."

"Tell me about California," I said. "Tell me the fucking truth."

"What do you mean? I thought Kyle had told you everything."

"I feel like he probably hasn't."

"Well. I'm not going to tell you things that he might not want you to know. But there really wasn't much to it. He came to find me, to try to tell me it wasn't my fault. It was my fault, though, and he wouldn't leave until I denied this, but I refused to. He just - hung around, and I begged him to go and get on with his life, but I was too weak to really push him away like I should have. I watched him wasting away, with me, because of me - when Cartman came, it was like a nightmare, but I couldn't stop Kyle from leaving. He had to leave. I was killing him."

"What the hell do you mean? You were killing him?"

"I couldn't make enough money to feed him," Kenny said, and his voice cut away. He looked up at the house. "I thought," he said. "This - but no, he's going to leave Cartman. I can take care of him now."

"Have you been in touch with him?" I asked. "Since the accident?"

"He's going to call," Kenny said, and he turned back to me with a defiant look. "When he's tied up his last loose ends. He's going to call and I'm - we're going to leave together. I should sell this place. He says it's too big. He wants to live in a little cottage with a garden and-" Kenny saw the look on my face and stopped there. "I'm just waiting for his call," he said, sharply.

"Did you love him all along?" I asked, though it was a stupid question. Kenny was willing to conceal a murder - to take the blame for it, even, I suspected - just for Kyle, and there could be no other explanation as to why he would. "Like Cartman did, ever since we were kids?" Like I did; I didn't need to say that part out loud. I felt sure that Kenny knew, by then.

"Cartman never loved him," Kenny said, avoiding my question. "He can't love anything. He just lusts. Let's go up to the house. Let's have lunch."

"I've got no appetite," I said, which was true, though my stomach was achingly hollow. "Kyle - he just drove away? After he hit Butters?"

"I told him to," Kenny said. "I jerked the wheel."

"Yeah? I don't believe you."

"But you believe Kyle would do it?" Kenny asked, glaring at me. I scoffed, relieved to see an actual expression on his face at last.

"I can't put him up on a pedestal any more," I said. "It never did him any good, the way we - the three of us-"

"You call that a pedestal?" Kenny said. I thought he might hit me.

"You know what I mean," I said, and I left, unable to look at him any longer.

I would later regret that those were my last words to Kenny: _you know what I mean_. We all made too many assumptions about what the others were thinking, especially where Kyle was concerned. I expected Kenny to understand that Kyle had long been venerated by all of us in our own separate ways, even when Cartman had berated him mercilessly as a child. It was the only way he'd known how to express his fascination with Kyle, and his disgust with himself for this, at the time. Perhaps Cartman was still disgusted with himself for his feelings about Kyle; I didn't care, and I didn't care to hear any more of Kenny's version of things, either. I just wanted Kyle, and I wanted the truth from him, even if it devastated me. I'd heard enough about California: I wanted to know about New York, that summer when he fled from all of us and came back with a new smile that was glib and guarded. I wanted him to recount every painful minute of that summer he spent away from me, under the delusion that this would be cathartic for him. By the time I slammed the front door of the guest house behind me I had realized how incredibly selfish this desire was. Kyle had taken that time away from me, my chance to heal and explain and make things better, but it had been his time to take, and I couldn't beg to have it back without knowing that I was being monstrous to ask for it.

I began to pack, then lost steam. It seemed impossible to leave town without resolving things with Kyle, and I really had nothing to go back to in Connecticut, except for a stressful job search and the strained and temporary kindness of friends who would perhaps let me sleep on their couches until I found a place. My money was gone. I had enough for my next student loan payment, and that was all.

I watched Kenny's house all day, waiting for him to leave for the city, but he never did. As a result, I was stuck with the meager offerings in the guest house: I ate the remainder of the mini wheat bagels, which were like chewy cardboard in my mouth, and some grapes that were getting wrinkly. Between checking my phone obsessively and watching Kenny's driveway, I began to feel insane with isolated anger. Why was this whole thing uncoiling without me, always? How had I been demoted to least important, below Kenny and fucking Cartman? Bolstered by rage, I called Kyle's cell again when the sun went down, and this time I spoke after the beep that prompted me to leave a message.

"I've spoken to Kenny," I said, glad that I was sober and would remember not to say anything incriminating about the accident. "He's awaiting your call, as I'm sure you know. Why not just go away with him? What are you waiting for? I don't believe you ever loved Cartman - I could never believe that, even if you were with him for fifty years. Kenny has money now. Isn't that all you really want? All that matters in your current arrangement? So why not strike a deal with him? He gets to have you, you get to have his money. It's the same deal you made with Cartman, but Kenny is kind. You went to him before, when you were nineteen - you threw your life away just to clear up a misunderstanding. So why not now? Why wait? Where _are_ you?"

The recording cut off, and I was glad, because I began sobbing pitifully after asking Kyle's voice mail that question. I should have called him every day when he was in New York. I should have gone there, that summer, should have stolen my father's car to drive across the country and throw myself at his feet. I'd thought he wouldn't want me to. I was still afraid that I'd been right about that.

I slept on the couch in the sitting room, resolving to leave in the morning. I would go away to the east coast and try to forget all of this, as I had done before. I'd been so sure that I was at least partially successful, but all it had taken was one letter from Kenny to put me right back in my childhood bedroom, in that lost world where I had tried to clean Kyle up after it was much too late to do so. I thought of the letter that Kenny had written to Kyle, the one that prompted his trip to Los Angeles and his strange resolve to stay there until Kenny confessed that he hadn't been to blame. Who was to blame, exactly? Certainly not Kyle. Me, I decided: I had encouraged him to take the drug with us. I'd pressured him until he gave in, because I thought he might kiss me if he was high. That was all I'd wanted when I watched with glee as he swallowed that pill. I had been responsible for everything that followed: Kyle and I both knew it when we woke together in the haze of the fading high. I should have said so then. I should have given him permission to hate me so that he could move past what had happened, so that he could get away from all three of us.

Gun shots woke me, though I didn't know that was what I was hearing. The sound startled me anyway, and I rolled off the couch in a confused panic, landing hard on the floor. I thought maybe I had dreamed those loud noises, which were distant but also too close. I felt confident that I had only dreamed it as I cursed myself and sat up, and then there was another. It was unmistakably a gun shot, just like the ones I'd plugged my ears against when they burst from the end of my uncle Jimbo's rifle during our hunting trips. I waited, heart pounding, for what would come next, but there was only silence.

It was nine o'clock in the morning, already bright and hot outside. I was still dressed in my clothes from the day before, very hungry and thirsty as I peered out the windows of the guest house, trying to see what was going on. There was nothing visible, only the stately west wing of Kenny's mansion and the pines that shaded the area around the guest house. I thought of Cartman and was jolted with shock: he'd found out for sure that Kenny was seeing Kyle. He'd shot him.

Too panicked to consider my own safety, and afraid above all that Cartman might have killed Kyle before heading over to take care of Kenny, I bolted for the mansion, shouting Kenny's name. I went in through the kitchen and ran from room to room, realizing only as I searched for him that I had no idea which room in that house was his bedroom. I couldn't find one; it was as if he didn't have one, like he slept in one of the twenty well appointed guest rooms, maybe a different one every night, not wanting to leave traces himself anywhere, as if he was only a guest in this lifestyle. Exasperated, in a room on the second floor and only just beginning to worry that Cartman might be stalking me through the house with a loaded gun, I realized where I had neglected to look, stupid in my panic: the dock. Where I always found Kenny. I went to the window of that bedroom, which faced the water, but Kenny wasn't on the dock. Below my line of vision, something caught my gaze. A discoloration in the pool. Blood, and Kenny floating above it as if he was suspended on a cloud of swirling pink, the red pooling below. He was wearing small black bathing trunks. His foam pool cushion had drifted away to the edge of the pool, where there was more blood leaking into the water. I thought he must have been shot there and landed in the pool, but then I saw Clyde, who was bleeding from his forehead, the gun still crushed under his lifeless hand.

I was in shock for several days that didn't feel like days at all. My waking life had begun to seem like the extension of one long hour that would not pass, police asking me the same questions again and again, Wendy patting my hand and telling me I should eat. The theory the police had was that Kenny had run down Butters and Clyde had killed him in revenge, and then himself. I allowed them to believe this. It was what Kenny would have wanted, and it was what I longed to believe myself, rather than the fact that Kyle had now essentially killed three people with his recklessness.

"Three people," I mused deliriously at one point, high on some muscle relaxers Wendy had given me to calm my nerves. "But not the right three."

"What?" she said, stroking my hair. We were at her mother's house in South Park. All of my things were still at the lake.

"Nothing," I said. I would take the story about Cartman's birthday and what had happened to Kyle to my grave, as Kenny had.

Karen McCormick was an emotional wreck when she arrived in town, and Kenny's parents were nowhere to be found. Karen choked out something about her mother being in Baton Rogue before dissolving into hysterical sobs again. It fell to Wendy and I to do most of the arrangements for the funeral and the shutting up of the house, which Kenny had left to Karen. All of his other assets had been left to Damien Thorn, which enraged me enough to somewhat abate the guilt of letting everyone believe that Kenny had died as a cowardly killer. He could have at least left something for Kyle, if not all of it to Karen. It seemed to me that Damien had plenty already.

Wendy and I called everyone we could think of, and there weren't many who came to mind. If Kenny had new friends in the city or through work, we didn't know them or how to reach them. Damien Thorn would not return my calls. He did not attend the funeral, and neither did the twenty or so former classmates that Wendy and I had tried to reach. Even Craig did not attend, which infuriated me. He hadn't taken my calls all week, though he'd sent me one text message after the news about the murders came out:

_I need to distance myself from all of this for a while. I'd advise you to do the same asap._

I went directly from the funeral to Kenny's abandoned mansion, which we'd already listed on the market for Karen, who said she didn't even want to see it. She seemed to be under the impression that Kenny had gotten wealthy through illegal means, and I certainly didn't have any information to the contrary. I took a taxi to the mansion, leaving Wendy to clean up after the memorial service, which she'd hosted at her house, a pathetic party of seven that included my mother, Wendy's parents, Karen, Wendy, and myself. No one else came. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. The papers were suggesting that Kenny was the perpetrator of a deadly hit and run, and Clyde was painted as the true victim, driven to murder and suicide by the loss of his love. I had no plans to attend Clyde's funeral. It had been vile enough of me to show my face at Butters' service.

I dismissed the taxi at the gates of the mansion, wanting to spend some time on Kenny's estate before I left it behind forever. I wandered about, realizing only when I approached the pathway that led around the house to the pool deck that I was expecting to find Kenny somewhere, maybe down by the dock, and have some parting words with his ghost. Unnerved and suddenly feeling watched, I hurried to the guest house to pack up my things, to get it over with.

The front door of the guest house was unlocked. I hadn't been back inside since I'd bolted out to see if Kenny was bleeding to death with Cartman looming over him. I was surprised the realtor hadn't locked the door, as someone had been inside to cover the furniture. It was all hidden under white sheets, the kitchen neatened and smelling of cleaning products, the fridge emptied. I was glad that my things hadn't been disposed of in this effort to cleanse the place. My bags were in the foyer near the door, looking like a pair of tolerated but unwelcome guests. I unzipped one and went through it, surprised that someone had taken the care to pick out what was mine and what belonged to the estate, and further surprised that they had guessed correctly in every case. I frowned down at my t-shirts and socks, then sniffed them. They'd been laundered. I heard a noise from the back of the house and sprang to my feet, ready to confront an apparition.

"Hello?" I called. Another noise - bed springs creaking. It was coming from the room where I'd stayed all summer, on the first floor, at the back of the house, the room that had the best partial view of the lake. "Is someone there?" I asked again.

No response. I felt as if whoever was in the house was holding his breath just as I was, as if we could sense each other's every twitch in the disbursement of air inside the guest house. It was only then that I realized how stuffy and warm the place was, and that someone must have shut off the utilities already.

I think I knew what I would find by the time I started walking, taking long strides but not quite running. It was still a shock to see Kyle in the bed under the window where I'd slept all summer. I thought, absurdly, that the sheets hadn't been washed since I'd fucked Craig there, but there were no sheets. The bed had been stripped, and the furniture in the room was covered like it was in the sitting room. Kyle was lying on the bare mattress, hugging something to his chest, his chin and mouth hidden behind it. It was my sweatshirt, royal blue, with TRINITY across the chest in yellow lettering.

"Hi," he said, his voice muffled by it. He was dressed in my clothes as well, barefoot in my pajama pants and one of my favorite old t-shirts that I'd had since high school.

"What is this?" I asked. "Are you alright?"

Kyle closed his eyes. "I hate it when you ask me that."

"Well, fine. But are you?"

"Can we go for a walk?" Kyle asked, and he sat up. He didn't look well; he clearly hadn't washed his hair for some time. "Can I talk to you before you go away forever?"

"Yes, of course," I said, and then I remembered he had hit Butters with Cartman's car and left him for dead. I didn't want to confront him about that immediately, but it hardened me, and I moved away when he crossed the room and tried to take my arm. "You missed the funeral," I said. "Kenny's, I mean."

"I couldn't-" Kyle said, and when he lost his voice I almost forgave him. I held my arm out, anyway, and he took it.

"What's that smell?" I asked when he was close, walking beside me through the house.

"Oh," he said. He sniffed the sleeve of the t-shirt he was wearing. "It must be in my hair. Cartman tried to burn the house down."

"He - what? When? Where is he?"

"Not here - not this house. Our house. Our bed, actually. I told him I was leaving him, and he set fire to our bed. It was a pathetic little fire - I put it out with the comforter. Smothered it, you know. But there was a lot of smoke, and I haven't showered since then."

I was reeling as we walked out into the hot afternoon, barely able to make sense of anything he was saying, or at least to take any of it seriously.

"When was this?" I asked, tugging him a little closer as we walked through the modest garden in the backyard, toward the lake.

"A few days ago." He frowned. "I think? I've lost track of time. Anyway, I fled in a row boat. My arms are so sore. This part of the lake is really bigger than it looks, you know. Once you're out in the middle of it, it's so much bigger."

"You came here," I said, glancing back at the guest house. "Looking for me?"

"Yes," Kyle said, softly. He was staring straight ahead, seeming dazed. "But I guess I knew you wouldn't be there. I washed your clothes before they turned the power off. And dried them, folded them-"

"I saw. Let's sit, okay?"

We came to a gazebo that looked out at the lake and sat together on its wooden bench. In the shade, the heat wasn't so bad, and there were warblers singing in the pines overhead, boats humming through the water in the distance. We were quiet for a while, not looking at each other, both breathing hard.

"He ran right at the car," Kyle said. "Like, like - like he thought. Well, he must have thought it was Cartman. I tried to - there was nothing to do about it, he just ran right in front of us. And I was driving so fast. I panicked. Kenny told me to drive, he said - just drive, Kyle, it's okay, just drive away."

"Everyone thinks-"

"I know. He said he wanted it that way. He said, if the police came asking, to tell them he was driving. Would I have been able to?" He looked at me then, his eyes wide with horror. "Would I have, do you think?"

"We'll never have to find out," I said.

"Well." Kyle looked away again. "What am I supposed to do now? I guess you think I should turn myself in, to clear Kenny's name."

"No, I don't think you should. But Cartman - does he know it was you driving?"

"Yes." Kyle closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I was frantic, I was - stupid, panicked. I told him. He calmed me down, told me he'd taken care of it. God, Stan, oh God-"

His hands were shaking. I took them between mine and held them. I didn't forgive him, but I also felt like I didn't need to, like we were in the afterlife ourselves, all of that mortal business long past.

"Now I'll never get his money," Kyle said, and he laughed bitterly. "He says he'll tell the truth about the accident if I try. It's stupid, he's got no proof, and he'd be culpable himself for concealing evidence. He's the one who washed the blood off the car. But I don't want to test him - I don't even want his money. It's good that I've got nothing now."

"You've got your freedom," I said.

"Oh," Kyle said, very softly. His eyes were beginning to overflow, tears leaking out. "I thought. For a moment there I thought you would say 'me, you've got me.'"

I didn't say that. We stared at the lake for a while, his hands pressed between mine. Just the sound of his breath and his sniffling was calming me into a near trance. I dried his cheeks for him after his tears stopped falling.

"I should show you the letter Kenny wrote me," Kenny said. "At the end of my freshman year, when I was eighteen. Nineteen? Whatever. I had started, you know, to move beyond all of that, and here Kenny was, apologizing for it, just - berating himself, promising me that he would never forgive himself, that he hadn't forgotten how badly he'd hurt me, that he would live the rest of his life in humble memorial to my lost innocence, or some - some insane thing like that. I was so fucking devastated, I didn't even finish the semester. I came straight to you."

"Me?"

"Yes, to Trinity. The whole time, I was trying to work up the nerve to show you the letter and ask you what the hell I should do about it. But it was like - not like you'd forgotten, because every time our eyes met I'd feel this jolt of horrible shame, and I knew you were feeling it, too, as guilt. But you were showing me the cafeteria, and the gym, and your dorm with your fucking Kandinsky posters, and I just. I didn't know how to talk about it. I left you to your new life and went straight to the source, to Kenny."

"And the two of you fell in love," I said, hatefully. "In L.A."

"Love?" Kyle wrinkled his nose; it looked more like his old one when he did. "No, well - we had a sort of affair, I guess, but it wasn't me Kenny loved, no. Not as, like, a person. He was in love with the idea of doing penance for me, for that day. For bringing drugs to Cartman's birthday party and taking money for them, and. All of it. I was this symbol to him in the worst, most alienating way - wretched and holy at the same time. I was something he was apologizing for. He couldn't even get it up for me, nine times out of ten. Oh, shit." Kyle winced again. "I shouldn't say that. It hasn't even hit me that he's dead. You found him?"

"I don't want to talk about it," I said, and a memory of the blood in the pool made me flinch. "I just, I wish you'd shown me that letter. At Trinity. I was trying so hard to act normal and cheerful, because I didn't know what else to do. I can't believe you didn't see through it."

"I did! It was worse that you were pretending. We'd both been pretending for each other ever since I got back from New York. I thought: at least with Kenny things will be real. And boy were they. I did drugs with prostitutes, Stan."

"You - what?"

"We lived with these call boys. Oh my God, they were the most pathetic, sad-eyed twinks you'd ever seen. I would come home from a nine hour shift washing dishes, smoke weed with them and talk about how I should change careers. They were making a lot of money."

"Kyle."

"I didn't, of course - Kenny wouldn't have let me. He did protect me from becoming an actual whore, which was what I felt like I was anyway. Then Cartman showed up and I sold my soul to him for a steak dinner."

"He doesn't own your soul." I pressed my hands around Kyle's more snugly. "You've left him now. You're free."

"Ha," Kyle said. "Free, right. I'll never close my eyes and not see Butters' face, right before the car - right before I hit him. His eyes were just - I'll never forget the way his face looked when he realized that I'd hit the brakes too late. Never."

I hugged Kyle to me, not sure what else I could do. We were quiet again, listening to gentle waves lap against the lake shore. There were a lot of people on the water that day, farther out, in boats.

"I'll never forget your eyes," I said. "That night. After I'd tried to clean you up."

"Clean me out, you mean," Kyle said, and he pulled away from me, taking his hands from mine. "God. I wasted so many years trying to hate you for letting that happen to me. I couldn't hate Kenny - he hated himself enough already. And Cartman was just being Cartman. He honestly never saw the harm in it. But you. You were there, you were there and you didn't even say you were sorry when it was over."

"Do you honestly think I don't hate myself for it?" I was beginning to shake all over, feeling as if we both had guns pressed to each other's heads. "Did you ever think I wasn't sorry? Ever, even for a moment?"

"You looked so devastated that night," Kyle said. He wasn't looking at me, didn't seem to be looking at anything precisely. "But mostly scared. Like I was this bomb that could go off at any moment."

"I wanted - I wanted to comfort you, Kyle, it's my biggest regret, I just didn't know where to begin, what kind of words could possibly convey how horrified I was when I woke up from that nightmare and realized it had all been real."

"But it wasn't a nightmare," Kyle said, frowning at me. "Or, yes, but not - during. I felt like we were gods or something. We were all so perfect. So high, obviously, but. I remember thinking we were perfect, the four of us, together, like that. It felt like this math equation I'd finally solved. When really I'd only ever wanted you."

I reached for his hands again, and held them more gently this time. He pressed his face against my shoulder and nosed at me, eyes closed. I swallowed down some wracking sobs that I didn't have time for.

"I still-" I said, and I swallowed again, trying to steady my voice. I couldn't. Kyle looked up, shook his head as if to quiet what I wasn't saying, and cupped my cheeks.

"I read this quote, once," he said, whispering. "In some trashy novel. Or maybe it wasn't trashy, but it was a love story. It was something like - 'I've always been faithful to you, if faithful means the experience against which everything else has been measured.' No, I'm lying. It wasn't something like that, that's the exact quote. I must have read it a thousand times, and I memorized it, because it struck me - it was you. That was my quote about you."

"I want to go back," I said. "I've got to fix this, we have to undo it all somehow."

"Shh." Kyle stroked my cheeks with his thumbs. He smelled like fire and sweat. "We could still find out. We could pretend, for one afternoon, you know? Before everything just falls apart for good. We could find out what it would have been like."

"What?"

"I've not - I've not been with anyone but them. And you, only that once. Don't you want to see what it would have been like if it had ever been just me and you?"

He stood, holding my hand, and pulled me up. I let him walk me toward the house, not entirely sure what was happening. Was he actually suggesting we have sex? It seemed insane to me, though I was aroused already, watching him tip-toe through the yard, his feet still bare, my pajama pants hanging over them.

"That day," Kyle said, as we walked into the house, "Cartman's birthday, at the start of it, when the drug first entered my bloodstream or whatever - I felt like we existed outside of time. I want to feel that way with you. Just with you. And I already feel kind of like I'm in a parallel universe, today. So let's - yeah. Shut the door, okay? And lock it. It's so hot in here. That's good, though. Let's pretend we're in the afterlife. That we're in your Christian hell together and we can just do whatever we like, because we're already damned."

We went to the bedroom. I was roasting inside my clothes, wearing the fucking suit Kenny had bought for me, again. I'd worn it to his funeral, though it hadn't been cleaned since I'd wiped vomit on the sleeve after Butters' memorial service.

"Kenny is dead," I said. Kyle and I were standing near the bed, facing each other, motionless.

"I killed him," Kyle said. "In a sense. But I think he wanted me to."

I opened my mouth to debate that, then felt a kind of feverish swoon move through me when I realized it was probably true. I reached for Kyle's shirt - my shirt - and took hold of the hem.

"Wait," I said when he leaned up to kiss me. "Wait, not like this. It wouldn't have been like this."

"What?" Kyle said, softly. "Stan -" He pulled free when I took his hand and tried to lead him from the room. His eyes were wet when I turned back to him. "Stan, please," he said. "I need this."

"I know," I said. I took his hand again. "Come here."

He let me lead him from the room this time, and I took him into the sitting room where he'd had his reunion with Kenny. It looked like a very different room now, with the furniture covered, no flowers crowding around us, no platters of cookies laid out on the table. The clock Kenny had upset had disappeared from the mantle. I walked to a short, boxy armchair that was covered with a sheet like everything else, and pointed it toward the sheet-draped cabinet that hid the TV - unless that had been taken, too. It didn't matter. Kyle stood watching me arrange the chair, and he looked at me with confusion when I put out my hand for him again.

"C'mon," I said. "Let me show you how it would have been."

I could see that it hadn't hit him yet, but he came to me. We sat down together, and I put my hands between my knees, leaned back against the cushion and stared in the direction of the TV. When I looked over at Kyle, he had closed his eyes. His lips were shaking.

"Oh, you're cruel," he said, and he opened his eyes. "The beanbag chair."

"I don't mean to be cruel. Look, just. Look."

I took his hand, nervous as a kid, the way I would have been back then. This, at least, was unchanged. I was afraid to try to have Kyle. His fingers were shaking as they twined through mine. We met each other's eyes shyly.

"But you wouldn't be wearing a tie," he said, running his fingertips down over it. I shuddered as if he'd touched my skin.

"Maybe I just got back from church," I said.

Kyle leaned back beside me, settling in. He was still playing with my tie, absently, the way he might have if we were boys, for the excuse to touch some part of me. I used to do the same thing with him, and was obsessed with the beanbag chair, where his thigh would press warm and snug against mine, and sometimes parts of us would overlap slightly, his elbow resting in the crook of my arm, tickling me there when he shifted. I watched his hands as he unfastened my tie, working slowly, as if it was a delicate procedure that could easily go wrong.

"Hey," I said when he had it mostly undone. He looked up at me, and I tried so hard to believe that we were back in the beanbag chair, safe and sound in the past. I kissed him experimentally, just a gentle peck on his lips. We looked at each other when I'd pulled back, and he moved in for another soft kiss. Just as I'd always hoped he would, if I'd ever been brave enough to try it.

"Stan," he said, and I didn't want to hesitate, but I studied his eyes. He looked different, already. I prayed that he wasn't just acting. He looked like he had back then, on the beanbag chair, afraid but brave.

"I love you more than they do," I said, as if Kenny was still alive and Cartman hadn't proven to be an inferior suitor long ago. Kyle nodded.

"I know," he said. "You love the bad parts, too."

"Ha. Didn't they?" Kenny had seen him kill a man, after all. God only knew what Cartman had seen.

"No," Kyle said, and he shook his head emphatically. "They wanted me to be better. Trust me, they did. They wanted me to be better than them, to be this achievement that they could hoard and polish. You don't care if I'm better than you or not. Do you?"

"Better – how?"

"Never mind, shhh." He kissed me again, his tongue sneaking out to caress my lower lip, then to press against mine when I opened my mouth, too. I let go of his hand and slid my arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer. I heard him saying, or maybe tasted it: _I am a real person, remember?_ I did remember. I tried to tell him so as I ran my hands over him, up under the t-shirt he had stolen from me, over the bulge of his erection, through his greasy hair. Kyle climbed into my lap, straddling me, and kissed my neck, sucking and nipping in spots, making me throw my head back and moan. We would have done this on the beanbag chair, I thought, and when Kyle plunged his tongue into my mouth again I thought: fuck it, we are doing it there. This was time travel, because between the two of us we had the power to make all that had happened irrelevant, and we had done it. Nothing mattered, only that I could keep touching him, kissing him. That I could _keep_ him, though of course I couldn't. I pushed the thought away and tore his shirt off.

"On that bed," he said, panting. "Please, I want to be on my back."

I carried him there, mouthing at his neck. For a moment I felt like I had that day, minus the drugs, or maybe my natural euphoria actually approached that level of mindless desire. I forced myself to calm down, and when I'd laid him on the bed I kissed him all over his chest, sucked at his nipples, tickled my fingers into his shallow belly button. Kyle was crying a little, but also smiling, and I knew that smile, had known it since I was three years old: it was real.

For a moment I was panicked about the lube prospects, but of course Kyle had kept some, reserved from my summer supplies, in the nightstand drawer by the bed. Of course he had known that I would come, and that it would come to this. I was never more glad to predictable, to have my needs anticipated. I opened him carefully, as if he was a virgin. He felt that tight, and gasped on my fingers, writhing and blushing, pulling me down for kisses when the intensity of what he was feeling seemed to frighten him.

"Ready?" I whispered when he was squirming on two of my fingers, biting at my bottom lip.

"Yes," he said, and he gave me the most unguarded look I had seen since he'd wept over the fact that all the girls in elementary school thought he was ugly – that kind of need, the shameless kind. He was shameless, I was guiltless: I slid into him and we both sighed, clutching at each other greedily, as if we weren't already as close as our bodies would allow.

I had been too high, our first time, to appreciate Kyle's noises, and as I fucked him I imagined that Cartman had never heard these, and that Kenny hadn't, that Kyle had never made these noises in their presence. He wouldn't have made himself vulnerable like this for Cartman, and wouldn't have wanted to burden Kenny with the obvious sadness in his little whimpers and groans. It wasn't a sadness about what was happening presently – I made sure of this by whispering entreaties against his lips, asking him if he was okay, if I should continue – it was a sadness that was bigger than sex, the kind of indistinct longing for something more than what our bodies were capable of doing. Despite this imperfection, Kyle came all over himself while I fucked him, pulling at his cock while my hand guided his, and I couldn't last much longer after that. I fell down onto him, using what little energy I still had to lick his neck while my hips twitched tiredly, pushing the last of it into him.

There was a deep stillness when we were done, and I felt how stuffy the room was again, the heat closing around me like something I had held back with my hands for as long as I could. I struggled up onto my elbows and reminded myself that being a coward had destroyed me when I was seventeen. I nudged Kyle's cheek with my nose until he'd opened his eyes, and stared down into them.

"Dude," I said. "Just let me take care of you. I know I don't have money. But I feel like I could. I feel like I could make you happy."

"Fuh," he said, and I felt like I was smothering him, so I moved off, slid out. He pushed at my chest and sat up, looking disoriented. I gave him space, watched him toy with his left nipple. He turned to look at me, and I began to feel worthless for being so predictable, because I had no idea what he would do.

"Yeah," he said, and he lifted his hand toward my lips. I kissed his knuckles. "Let's go home. Please, let's just go home."

We did. A taxi took us back to South Park. To his parents' house, precisely. I didn't go in to greet them with Kyle. That would have been too much, I felt, along with the news that he'd left Cartman. I walked to the house of the only person in town who I still trusted to shelter me: Jimbo Kern, who lived on the outskirts with his parter, Ned. I'm not sure any two people were ever happier to see me. We sampled several of Jimbo's home brews, ate venison chili, and capped the night off with shots of Wild Turkey. They made me a bed in the barn-like attic of their farmhouse, and I stared at the ceiling, thinking of Kyle, wondering if he would answer his phone when I called him in the morning as I'd promised that I would. I wasn't sure if the promise was more about me calling him or that I would at least wait until morning to call him.

Kyle answered when I called, and told me that he would change his number soon, because he would be back on his family plan. It heartened me so to hear him call his parents 'family,' after what I'd heard from Cartman's butler. Sheila and Gerald, for all their love of Cartman after he'd brought Kyle back to college and purportedly converted to Judaism, were instantly on Kyle's side when they heard of Cartman's infidelity, and the underplayed mention of Cartman's attempt to kill Kyle with fire – surely they smelled it in his hair, for he had still not showered. It was enough to push them into complete parental protectiveness. Kyle was fed coffee cake for breakfast, egg salad sandwiches for lunch, roasts and steamed veggies for dinner. I envied him, because my own family had dispersed for good, but Jimbo and Ned were kind to me, providing hearty meals and work on the farm to fill my unemployed hours. In the evenings and on the weekends Kyle and I huddled together like lonely teenagers, humping quietly when we could get away with it, kissing more than fucking. I loved it; I wept with gratitude when I returned to my bed in the damp attic of my uncle's house, knowing that Kyle was safe in his childhood bedroom even as I longed to have him in mine.

A month after I'd attempted to get Damien Thorn to attend Kenny's funeral, I had a voice mail from him. I'd gotten a part time job thanks to a friend of Jimbo's, stocking a liquor store. It was mostly heavy lifting, and I was glad for it, because Kyle squeezed my arm muscles and grinned proudly when we reunited each evening.

I didn't tell Kyle about my trip into Denver to visit Damien, partly because it fell on a weekend when he was already tense about an upcoming job interview. He was hoping to get a cushy job with the South Park DMV, and was obsessively reviewing the intricacies of the driving test, as if they would put him behind the wheel. I borrowed Jimbo's truck, glad to be driving such an ugly beast into the city. The last time I'd been to Denver I'd driven Cartman's Bentley, and that felt like a bad dream already. Sometimes it was too real in my memory, but I only had to find Kyle at the end of the day and hold him so close that his warmth eclipsed my past atmospheres: then it wasn't real enough to hurt me. It was only something that happened and was now not happening anymore – gravestones and automobiles, fortunes and ecstasies.

In Denver, I had Jimbo's rusty truck valeted and laughed to myself about it. The humor drained from me as I took the elevator up to Damien's office and began to wonder why I had accepted his invitation. The man wore human molars as cuff links, and I had already found what I'd been looking for in Kyle: what did I have to gain from meeting with a contributing factor to Kenny's downfall?

I think I realized, as I stepped into Damien's penthouse foyer, that I had come to him as a fellow factor in that downfall, to see what he had to say about it and how it would illuminate my own involvement. Damien had a new twink assistant with bored bedroom eyes and carefully styled hair that was meant to look lazy. I wondered what had happed to the previous boy.

"I've been thinking about you," Damien said when I was standing before his massive desk, which dwarfed him and made him look too young to be there. "In terms of a replacement."

"Replacement?" I said, with as disbelieving a tone as I could manage. I wasn't actually that surprised, just determined to communicate my disgust.

"I like you," Damien said. "You've got bigger balls than McCormick did. I think I could use someone like you, if you're interested in investment opportunities."

"No," I said, though every day was a humiliating exercise in things that I couldn't afford to buy for Kyle. "I'm not – I've got other commitments."

"Oh." Damien threaded his fingers together and grinned at me. Again I wondered why I had come, and I headed for the door. "He was a whore, you know," Damien said. I turned back to him.

"What?" I was ready to kill him there in his spacious office, assuming he was talking about Kyle.

"Kenny McCormick," Damien said. "He was my father's favorite rent boy when I met him."

"Who's your father?" I asked, ready to run.

Damien laughed, showing me his sharp canine teeth.

"You haven't figured it out by now?" he asked, grinning crookedly.

I turned to go, resolving never to leave South Park again. If that was where I could hide, ironically, from all the rest of it, I would accept what sanctuary I had, with Kyle there to hide alongside me. "I don't have time for these games," I said, grabbing for the handle on Damien's office door.

"Pity," Damien said, and I paused to hear the rest. "When you're like me, and you have all the time in the world, games are the only things that interest you."

Outside, I waited for the valet to bring the car around, convinced that he was stalling because Damien had given him instructions to do so, and I caught sight of something familiar on the street. It was Craig Tucker, and the companion he was talking with in a conspiring fashion was Eric Cartman.

I shouted to them, unwilling to let them escape my rage. They looked at me with banal recognition, as if they ran into people they'd half-destroyed all the time. Craig was always cool, but I had expected Cartman at least to sneer and spit at me.

"You missed Kenny's funeral," I said when they walked over to me.

"What?" Cartman said. He was sweating, patting at himself with a handkerchief. It was August, hot as hell in the crucible of the city. I waited for the crude comments about how I had stolen Kyle away at last, but Cartman only seemed overheated in a physical sense, ready to walk on.

"Kenny," I said, and I looked at Craig, giving up on Cartman. "He died. You may have heard."

"Of course we heard," Craig said. "A tragic ending to that whole story."

"That whole story," I said, as if Craig knew it. I glanced at Cartman to make sure that it hadn't been relayed without my permission – without Kyle's. Cartman glowered at me, then faltered. I don't think he'd ever shown that much of himself to Kenny or Kyle. I'm not sure why it was me that he'd always trusted with his smallest, most honest self, but I suspected that it was because he had the least use for me, and also the most grudging respect. I was sure, though we didn't discuss it then, that he knew I had staked my claim in Kyle at last. That was how he would see it: Kyle was land he'd tried to buy that had already been conquered. He was romantic about Kyle's love in all the worst ways. Kyle and I had talked about it at some length already.

"Well," I said, looking at Craig, "Here's my car."

The rusty old Ford was brought up by a valet then. I saw Cartman smirk as if in triumph. As long as his car cost more than mine, whichever bed Kyle slept in, he was still ahead of me in his own estimation. Craig tried to hold my gaze, but I wouldn't let him, still angry with him for ignoring Kenny's funeral like it was a bad investment.

Back in South Park, it was nearing sundown. The days were getting shorter. I helped Ned with the firewood that we were preparing to sell in bulk in a few months, and offered to take the truck for an oil change in the morning. I'd promised to pick Kyle up at nine and take him to Tartufo's for pizza before the midnight movie, which would probably be deserted except for the two of us.

It had hit me harder than I'd anticipated, on the way down from Damien's top floor office, that Kenny was gone. He seemed like a talisman we'd lost, when I considered it most callously, and like a guardian we'd neglected.

Cartman remarried, choosing a woman this time around. It was good for his company. Damien disappeared. I had a hard time finding any evidence he'd existed, five years later.

Five years later: Kyle and I were still in South Park, me working at a craft beer store that had become part of the community's minor tourism draw, Kyle shelving books at the high school library. He fought many battles to get banned books reinstated. I fought a few less publicized battles to get particularly potent beers on the shelves of local liquor stores. Kyle and I discussed our efforts over dinner, disagreed at times, and had each other without reservations after the plates were cleared, in the cramped apartment that we paid too much rent for.

I thought about Kenny all the time, and I know Kyle thought about Butters. What if Kenny hadn't written those letters, first to Kyle and then to me? By the time Kenny wrote to me, did he know what he was doing, that there was nothing left of the past but to bring Kyle and I together?

We invested in Christmas trees, a few overpriced Crate and Barrel accessories, and finally in a dog who reminded me of Sparky and made me cry outside a PetSmart in Colorado Springs. His name was Freddie Mercury. We were the most stylish gay couple in South Park – which wasn't a hard thing to achieve – eking out a living in retail and community service, showing up at holiday parties with our hands in each other's pockets. Every intricacy of domestic life swept me off my feet, at first: we used the same soap, he needed 700 count sheets to help his skin stay soft – my cheese grater was extremely inferior! Eventually the demands irritated me in the most pleasantly mundane way, because Kyle was mine, part of my life, inextricable, and if I ignored his opinion on my cheese grater I would be adrift, pointless, less than myself without his input.

We'd been living together for three years when Kyle sent me to town on Christmas Eve for a tube of Grands cinnamon rolls. My sister liked them, a detail Kyle had noticed and deemed important, and I was happy to get away for a moment, because Kyle and my mother were both a little drunk from wine and were talking about me in a fond but emasculating way. On the radio, I blasted the kind of music Kyle didn't like: dumb stuff from the eighties, dumber stuff from our own generation.

At the store, I lingered in the bakery, wishing there were freshly baked cinnamon rolls that I could provide as a substitution for the expected frozen drudgery. I was poking through coffee cakes when I felt someone staring at me and saw Craig Tucker near the sliced breads. I guess we were about thirty years old at that point. He walked toward me, unsmiling, and I felt like a spy who'd been caught, though I'd done nothing wrong.

"You're in town?" I said, as if he wasn't allowed to be. As if he'd broken some treaty.

"For Christmas," Craig said. He looked like he always had: polished, cool, untouched. I knew then, more concretely, that I'd loved Kyle most for being as messy as he was beautiful, for no longer being able to afford hair treatments.

"Welcome, uh," I said, twisting a bag of brussel sprouts that Kyle had requested; he liked to roast them with some olive oil and salt. "Back – welcome back."

Craig smiled, rolled his eyes, and walked past me. As he did, he touched my arm, and only then did I register that our meeting was awkward not only because we'd known each other as children but because I'd had sex with him more than once.

"I see Kyle's gotten what he wanted," Craig said, dragging his hand along my arm, already walking away. "I guess we all knew that he would."

I didn't say anything in response, but all the way home I composed angry rebuttals. None of my arguments really worked without me saying to Craig, theoretically, _but you don't know what we did to him_. Cartman had moved on to other conquests, Kenny was dead, and I was living with my guilt, fetching brussel sprouts on holidays. It was pointless to try to articulate to outsiders, and they were all outsiders.

"I saw Craig today," I said when I was lying in bed with Kyle that night, our beloved mutt curled up at the end of the bed.

"Craig?" Kyle said, already beginning to doze against my chest.

"From school," I said, as if he would not remember Craig from that afternoon at the Palace. We both woke with nightmares regularly, remembering Cartman's birthdays.

"Oh," Kyle said, eyes closed, clutching at me. "Yes – him."

They were all reduced to that, a 'him' that Kyle or I muttered about while drifting to sleep. I could feel that he was awake that night, though, that we were both clinging to each other so tightly because we were afraid we might be monsters. I thought sometimes that we must be: we were ruthless in our eventual resolve to not be apart anymore. It hadn't been intentional, but our acceptance of it was.

Sometimes I felt like Kenny was watching us, as if from across a lake, through the mists that had gathered over the surface of the water, seeking out the glow of our green light. I wondered what he thought about me having Kyle at last, and I often dreamed about him, but in the dreams I was rarely able to find him. I would search the rooms of that mansion, which were endless and inescapable, calling Kenny's name and looking for any signs of life: a glass of water on a bedside table, a jacket hung over a chair, a pair of shoes not tucked away in a closet. There was nothing, most nights. He was nowhere to be found, and I was left to draw my own conclusions about him, as I had been in life: that he had loved Kyle the way that Kyle described, as a symbol, as something too sacred to actually touch. I envied that, in a sense, for it had left Kenny the only innocent party in all of this, but I wouldn't give up my guilt in exchange for what I had: Kyle in my arms, his untamed hair tickling my jaw as he eased into sleep at last. It was a wealth I had once never dreamed I could possess, and, holding him, I understood the lengths that Cartman and Kenny had once gone to in order to amass their own fortunes.

I told myself I was not the same as them. I had turned Damien down. I lived modestly and clipped coupons. But there was something extravagant about having Kyle, and when I woke on cold mornings and cuddled around him to keep him warm, I felt victorious. It was a cynical thought and I pushed it away, buried my face in Kyle's hair and breathed in the smell of him, making myself remember how I'd felt on prom night, the first time I looked at him and thought, as he was laughing at some joke and adjusting his green tie: maybe I could kiss him someday.

* * *

The end.

(note: the quote Kyle mentions is from The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve.)


End file.
